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Review: Cleveland Orchestra with Marin Alsop and pianist David Fray (November 30)

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by Daniel Hathaway

AlsopTwo of the three works that Baltimore Symphony music director Marin Alsop brought along for her guest appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra last week were strongly related through birth.

Both Samuel Barber’s Second Essay for Orchestra and Aaron Copland’s Symphony No. 3 were written at the behest of Serge Koussevitsky, the Barber a suggestion, the Copland an actual commission in memory of the conductor’s wife. Both date from the World War II years when American composers were writing confidently in their own independent voices.

As American composers, Barber and Copland were natural choices for Thanksgiving weekend concerts. The third work, Schumann’s piano concerto featuring French pianist David Fray, seemed at first to make an odd middle panel of this triptych, but ultimately served as a refreshing entremet between two heavily-scored works that could not escape echoing the thunder and heroism of a nation at war. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra “Fate and Freedom” Festival — Beethoven 4 and Shostakovich 8 (October 25)

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by Guytano Parks

BeethovenShostakovichOn Friday, October 25 The Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by music director Franz Welser-Möst, presented the second of three concerts of Beethoven and Shostakovich Symphonies as part of a week-long “Fate and Freedom Festival” — an exploration of the highly tempestuous and deeply emotional intermingling of music and politics.

Included in the Festival were films screened at The Cleveland Institute of Art (A Clockwork Orange) and The Cleveland Museum of Art (The New Babylon, featuring Shostakovich’s first film score), in addition to pre-film and pre-concert talks and a chamber music performance by members of The Cleveland Orchestra. On Saturday afternoon as a related event, the Metropolitan Opera’s production of The Nose by Shostakovich was shown LIVE in HD in select Northeast Ohio movie theaters.

Described by Robert Schumann as a “slender Greek maiden” compared to the Third and Fifth symphonies, Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony in B-flat is considerably less forceful and dramatic. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra Fate and Freedom Festival — Beethoven 5 and Shostakovich 10 (October 26)

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by Timothy Robson

BeethovenShostakovichSeverance Hall was sold out for Saturday evening for the third and final concert in The Cleveland Orchestra’s mini-series, Fate and Freedom: Music of Beethoven and Shostakovich. Music director Franz Welser-Möst conducted riveting performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93. The orchestra and it soloists sounded in particularly top form from beginning to end.

The program book featured specially written essays by Welser-Möst and composer/journalist Frank J. Oteri on the relationship of Beethoven’s and Shostakovich’s music to politics. For Beethoven, especially composing the third, fourth and fifth symphonies following the French revolution and under the philosophy of the Enlightenment; and for Shostokovich, enduring the Stalinist period of World War II and the grim Soviet era 1950s following Stalin’s death.

Beethoven’s was a period of social upheaval and political protest; Shostakovich lived in an era of political repression, where a statement against the regime likely would have dire consequences. Both composers expressed their political views through their music: Beethoven the concept of the freedom of all humankind; Shostokovich the idea of political protest hidden in secret messages within his music. The appreciation of these two great symphonies is not dependent on awareness of their context—even when performed together; however, the written commentary did enhance the experience. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra “Fate and Freedom” Festival — Beethoven 3 and Shostakovich 6 (October 24)

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by Daniel Hathaway

BeethovenShostakovichFranz Welser-Möst returned to the Severance Hall stage on Thursday evening to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in the first of three concerts on consecutive evenings that paired symphonies by Beethoven and Shostakovich under the banner of the orchestra’s “Fate and Freedom Festival.”

In a pre-concert chat in Reinberger Chamber Music Hall with director of artistic planning Mark Williams, Welser-Möst noted that he had been looking for a new way to program a Vienna Musikverein Beethoven cycle and credited the Takács Quartet with the idea of pairing Beethoven and Shostakovich on the same program. (The orchestra will repeat this three-concert cycle in the Austrian capital from November 20-22.)

Whether you care to go deeply into the philosophical and political similarities and contrasts between the two composers, as Welser-Möst did in his program book essay, or simply enjoy hearing a pair of their symphonies in close succession, there was a lot to stimulate the mind and the ear last weekend. Thursday evening’s short performance coupled Beethoven’s third symphony with Shostakovich’s sixth — each written during the composers’ thirty-third year. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra with Jakub Hrůša (October 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Hrusa-Jakub-by-Petra-KlackovaA dismembered maiden, a Slavic hero and a mismatched beau with ADD shared the stage with Czech guest conductor Jakub Hrůša and The Cleveland Orchestra last Thursday evening at Severance Hall. That sounds like the cast for a particularly unlikely sitcom, but those were only a few of the characters brought vividly to life by Haydn in his “Symphony” subtitled Il distratto, by Dvořák in his symphonic poem The Golden Spinning Wheel and by Janáček in his “Rhapsody for Orchestra,” Taras Bulba, three evocative pieces inspired by different genres of literature.

Although it goes by the name of Symphony No. 60, Haydn’s six-movement work is really a suite recycled from the incidental music to Die Zerstreute, the German reworking of a comedy by Jean-François Regnard staged at the Esterházy Court. The plot concerns an unfocused daydreamer, Leander, who is pushed into a romance with Isabelle by her Parisian mother — but, of course, Isabelle has her eyes on someone else.

You can count on Haydn to be witty, but Il distratto finds him reveling both in sophisticated humor and low-hanging jokes (e.g. subtle musical references to Leander’s distractedness, and a sudden, noisy tuning session by the violins in the finale that had the audience giggling.) [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Orchestra’s “Fate and Freedom Festival” begins with screening of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange

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BeethovenShostakovichby Mike Telin

The opportunity to look beyond composers’ music and into the world that shaped their lives and creative output is often available only to students enrolled in music history classes. Beginning tonight and continuing through Saturday, The Cleveland Orchestra presents Fate and Freedom: Music of Beethoven and Shostakovich. Music director Franz Welser-Möst conceived the Festival to look more closely at landmark symphonies by Beethoven and Shostakovich and provide context around their creation, while examining the ever-relevant themes of personal and societal freedom they express.

“Franz Welser-Möst is interested in bringing together unusual or disparate elements to see how they change our palette,” the orchestra’s director of artistic planning Mark Williams told us by telephone. “For example, a couple of seasons ago the orchestra played a number of works by Bruckner paired with the works of John Adams. The idea being that maybe Bruckner was the father of minimalism. Whether or not you agree with it, it is a statement.”

Fate and Freedom is a coming together of organizations and experts in their fields of study. On the musical front, Franz Welser-Möst will lead three Cleveland Orchestra concerts on three consecutive evenings, pairing Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 3, 4, and 5 with Shostakovich’s Symphonies Nos. 6, 8, and 10. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Orchestra: a conversation with tenor Matthew Polenzani

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by Mike Telin
POLENZANI-MatthewAmerican lyric tenor Matthew Polenzani has been praised for the artistic versatility and fresh lyricism that he brings to concert and operatic appearances on leading international stages. Of his recent Metropolitan Opera performance as the young military officer Ferrando in Cosí Fan Tutte, Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times wrote, “[Polenzani’s] singing of Ferrando had Mozartean elegance along with exciting, tenorial ping. He brought honeyed sound and melting pianissimos to the sublime aria ‘Un’aura amorosa.’”

This weekend Matthew Polenzani returns to Severance Hall for three performances of Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. I reached him on his cell phone in New York where he was experiencing a real life moment —yes, stars of the Metropolitan Opera do get stuck in traffic with their kids. But being the very down-to-earth and gracious Midwesterner that he is, when I ask him if he would prefer that I call at another time he responds, “No not really, now is as good a time as any.” I began by asking him when he first came to Britten’s Serenade.

Matthew Polenzani: I knew about it because I have enjoyed Britten’s music from the time I first became interested in classical music. And I was invited to sing it with Jeffrey Tate in Minnesota around 2000. That was the first time I performed the piece and I loved it. It’s great music, very descriptive and pictorial writing. It’s just beautiful and I’ve enjoyed it very much. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Orchestra to feature Britten’s Serenade — a conversation with horn soloist Richard King

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by Mike Telin

KING-Richard“I have played many of the big horn concertos and this piece has been on the back burner because [we needed] to find a tenor who was of the right ilk and available, says Cleveland Orchestra principal horn Richard King. The piece King is referring to is Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings and luckily for Cleveland audiences, the right tenor has come along.

This weekend at Severance Hall, tenor Matthew Polenzani and Richard King will give the first performances by The Cleveland Orchestra of Britten’s haunting work. The concerts, under the direction of Marek Janowski, also include Fauré’s Suite from Pelléas and Mélisande and Franck’s Symphony in D minor. Additionally, on Friday, October 11 beginning at 11:30 at the Beechmont Country Club, Richard King will be the featured guest on the orchestra’s Meet the Artist Series.

We spoke to Richard King by telephone and began by asking him to share his thoughts on Britten’s Serenade.

Richard King: Well I have never played it, so I am very excited. I don’t know if the Serenade is in the mainstream anymore but this is Britten’s 100th birthday year. The piece was written for the great — and maybe the greatest horn player of all time — Dennis Brain at his request. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra: Russian evening with Vassily Sinaisky & Kirill Gerstein (September 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Sinaisky-VassilyNow that classical music has become increasingly homogenized through globalization, there’s something deeply satisfying about experiencing works from a national tradition interpreted by conductors and soloists who grew up speaking the language. On Thursday evening, Russian conductor Vassily Sinaisky and Russian-born pianist Kirill Gerstein treated the Severance Hall audience to deeply-felt performances of music by Liadov, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev. Led early on by Russian conductors, The Cleveland Orchestra has a near-native feel for this repertory and played it with expressive passion coupled with New World precision.

Conducting with his bare hands, Sinaisky, who is music director of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, painted perfect little scenes for each of Anatoly Liadov’s Eight Russian Folk Songs to open the program. English horn and bassoon solos (Robert Walters and Barrick Stees) set a solemn mood for the “Religious Chant,” an affect that first assistant principal cellist Richard Weiss recaptured later in the “Plaintive Song.” “Dance of the Gnat” created a buzz both in the strings and an amused audience. Mary Kay Fink’s piccolo soared out over pizzicato strings in the “Round Dance,” and a vivacious orchestral tutti brought the set of tiny pieces to a celebratory ending in the “Village Dance Song.” [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Orchestra — Pianist Hélène Grimaud talks about Blossom, Beethoven — and Wolves

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by Mike Telin

GRIMAUD-HeleneThe allure of performing in a natural setting made a strong impression on French-born pianist Hélène Grimaud in 1990 when she made her United States debut in the Schumann concerto at Blossom with The Cleveland Orchestra under Jahja Ling. “I was always fascinated by the US before I first stepped foot here,” she told us in a telephone conversation, “but once I did at Blossom I was so taken by everything. I was utterly charmed. Of course that fact that The Cleveland Orchestra is so magnificent was a big part of that, but it was also the warm hearts of the people and the entire team. The whole experience was really a turning point for me and the great acoustics changed my mind completely about performing in open air venues.”

Grimaud now splits her time between New York and London. She will return to Cleveland this weekend to join conductor Fabio Luisi in three indoor performances — the opening concerts of the Severance Hall season — programs that include Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”). The performances will be something of a reunion for pianist and conductor. “I have worked with Luisi many times,” Grimaud said, “and we toured this concerto with the Staatskapelle Dresden. I am particularly happy that my return to Cleveland with be with a colleague like him.”

Interestingly enough, Grimaud only recently warmed to the fifth Beethoven concerto. “It’s funny because for quite some time I was sort of circumspect about it because #4 was such a close friend. [Read more…]

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