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Preview: “California Masterworks” at Cleveland Museum of Art — a conversation with James Feddeck, Tom Welch and the Calder Quartet’s Andrew Bulbrook

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by Mike Telin

TCO-at-CMA-MastroianniOn Wednesday, May 1st and Friday, May 3rd in Gartner Auditorium, The Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Museum of Art will come together for their second collaboration, California Masterworks.

How did the two organizations come to the idea? “That’s a good question,” says Cleveland Orchestra Assistant Conductor James Feddeck. “After the enormous success of our first ever collaboration in 2011 we all began to talk about what the next collaboration would look like so I think the question is why California? That is what we are hoping to uncover during the week.”

So why California? Following a number of discussions, the two organizations determined that they should do something that embraced American music and the American spirit, but it wasn’t until Feddeck and Tom Welsh, the museum’s Director of City Stages, began to think about the composers they wanted to highlight that they discovered a common thread between them. “We found this interesting connection in that they were all influenced by their West Coast inspiration. I’m not sure that we are presenting a conclusion with these two concerts but what we are doing is presenting the music, the story and this common thread.” [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in Haydn’s The Seasons (April 25)

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by Daniel Hathaway

TCO&COCThe Cleveland Orchestra Chorus has had a lot on its plate this month, preparing and performing two major works just two weeks apart. This fine, all-volunteer ensemble — now celebrating its sixtieth anniversary — handily swapped the faux-medieval pastiche of Carmina Burana for the witty, cultured music of The Seasons, turning in a splendid performance of Haydn’s underappreciated, second oratorio under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst on Thursday evening, April 25 in Severance Hall — with a little help from The Cleveland Orchestra and three top-notch soloists.

The suddenly-flowering trees out front augured well for the occasion, which opened with an orchestral introduction depicting “the passage from winter to spring”. That was followed closely by the choral caveat: “Do not rejoice all too soon / for often, wrapped in mists, / winter creeps back again and strews / on blossom and bud his rigid poison.” Apparently, what goes for Cleveland also goes for Vienna. Though all four seasons cycled by onstage, Spring prevailed outside on Thursday night.

In setting Baron von Swieten’s adaptation of a lengthy text by Scots poet James Thomson, Haydn planned a major scene as the centerpiece of each season, calling on the chorus to play joyful, grateful countryfolk in Spring, storm-frightened villagers in Summer, hunters and wine tipplers in Autumn and spinners and storytellers gathered toastily around the fire in Winter. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst and Frank Peter Zimmermann (April 18)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Welser-Most-MastroianniLooking fit and energized after his recent back problems, Franz Welser-Möst returned to Severance Hall on Thursday evening, April 18 to lead one of the most exciting and highly-polished Cleveland Orchestra concerts of the season. And one of the most varied: the first performance of Sean Shepherd’s Tuolumne shared the program with Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with Frank Peter Zimmermann out in front, and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 6. One might quarrel with the ordering of the pieces, but the elements that made up this weekend’s musical triptych were smart choices and the performances were winners.

In February, Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow Sean Shepherd completed his impressions of three Yosemite National Park scenes captured by American photographer Ansel Adams, the final commission of Shepherd’s two-year residency with the orchestra. The composer is quick to point out that the piece is not a musical representation of the Adams images but “a kind of response to that set of three black-and-white photographs… a meditation on and celebration of both the place and the images” — exactly what the French Impressionists had in mind a century ago. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Orchestra to premiere Sean Shepherd’s Tuolumne this week

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by Mike Telin

SHEPHERD-Sean“Tuolumne is really the piece of my life so far,” says Sean Shepherd, the Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow of the Cleveland Orchestra. Beginning on Thursday, April 18 in Severance Hall, Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in the world premiere of Shepherd’s mammoth score. The concerts also include Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with Frank Peter Zimmermann as soloist and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 6.

Sean Shepherd is a fast-rising star in the field of contemporary concert music, Recent premieres include Blue Blazes, a Hechinger Commission from Christoph Eschenbach and the National Symphony Orchestra, Quartet for Oboe and Strings at the Santa Fe and La Jolla summer festivals in 2011, and a work for the Claremont Trio in celebration of the opening of Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. From 2010 to 2012 Shepherd served as the first-ever Composer-in-Residence of the Reno Philharmonic, his hometown, and in 2012 Susanna Mälkki, premiered Shepherd’s Ensemble Intercontemporain-commissioned Blur in Paris and Cologne.

In his program notes, Shepherd writes, “Tuolumne (‘two ALL um knee’ or, as some California locals say it, ‘two ALL ‘o me’), from the Native American language of Miwok, is a word of unclear meaning, but is often thought to describe the small group of indigenous people who lived in what is now known as Yosemite National Park. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra: Bach and Orff with Walters and Feddeck (April 11)

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by Daniel Hathaway

WALTERS-RobertPatrons who packed the four sold-out houses last weekend at Severance Hall came to hear Carl Orff’s spirited medieval cantata Carmina Burana, but they were also treated to the bonus of an elegant curtain-raiser in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in A for oboe d’amore and strings with Robert Walters on the solo line.

Bach — that great recycler — turned several wind concertos from his days as court composer at Köthen into harpsichord concertos for his coffee house concerts with the Leipzig University Collegium Musicum between 1729 and 1741. Though the originals have been lost, they can be reconstructed by clever musicologists, as an uncredited arranger did for BWV 1055.

James Feddeck, stepping in for Franz Welser-Möst last weekend, led a string section pared down to eight first violins, six seconds, five violas, four cellos and two double basses, creating an admirable balance between soloist and orchestra [Read more…]

Preview: Oboe d’amore concerto debuts at Severance Hall — a conversation with Robert Walters (and a poem)

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by Mike Telin

WALTERS-RobertIt’s always a big event when an orchestra performs Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The opening O Fortuna (O Fortune) is one of the most recognizable pieces of music thanks to its use in hundreds of commercials and films. The massive forces gathered on stage and the volume that is produced make it a thrill to hear live. Beginning on Thursday, April 11 at Severance Hall, Conductor James Feddeck and The Cleveland Orchestra will be joined by Rebecca Nelsen, soprano, Nicholas Phan, tenor, Stephen Powell, baritone, and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and Children’s Chorus for four performances of Orff’s masterpiece.

The concert also includes two Cleveland Orchestra firsts, a performance of J.S. Bach’s Concerto in A major, BWV 1055 for oboe d’amore and orchestra featuring Cleveland Orchestra English horn player Robert Walters. The concerts also mark the first time that any oboe d’amore concerto has been performed by the orchestra. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra with Alan Gilbert (March 21)

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by Daniel Hathaway

GILBERT-AlanHow much difference does a change of conductors make? Quite a lot, when you have an ensemble as cooperative and malleable as The Cleveland Orchestra, and when a big, sprawly work like Mahler’s seventh symphony is involved.

Last weekend, New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert returned to Severance Hall, where he had served as conducting assistant and assistant conductor from 1994-1997, to fill in for the ailing French maestro Pierre Boulez and to provide a fascinating contrast between what one conductor hypothetically might have done and what another one actually did.

A Boulez interpretation of Mahler 7 — purely speculative, of course — would probably have subjected the work to a thorough and rigorous formal analysis, would likely have mined the score for inner details and placed them importantly in the context of larger structures, and almost certainly would have observed every tempo change, rhythmic subtlety and dynamic level Mahler obsessively prescribed. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra: Dohnányi returns with Henze and Mahler (February 28)

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by Daniel Hathaway

DOHNANYI-Christoph vonCleveland Orchestra music director laureate Christoph von Dohnányi has returned to Severance Hall this weekend to revive part of one of his pet projects, Hans Werner Henze’s opera The Bassarids, and to conduct Mahler’s first experimental venture into symphonic form. On Thursday evening, the orchestra and audience welcomed their long-time maestro back with a palpably warm reception.

Dohnányi conducted the premiere of Henze’s Euripides-inspired opera at the Salzburg Festival in 1966 and led concert performances at Severance and Carnegie Halls in 1990. In 2005, at the conductor’s suggestion, Henze reshaped parts of the third act — where the action turns particularly dramatic — into an orchestral suite entitled Adagio, Fuge and Mänadentanz that covers a wide span of emotional territory in just half an hour. [Read more…]

Preview: Gianandrea Noseda & Massimo La Rosa to appear with The Cleveland Orchestra at Finney Chapel & Severance Hall

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by Mike Telin

TheNoseda-&-La-Rosa Risorgimento that united the Italian peninsula’s crazy-quilt of city states and regions into a single nation during the nineteenth century will be reenacted in a small way at Finney Chapel in Oberlin and Severance Hall this weekend, when guest conductor Gianandrea Noseda (born and raised in the North near Milan) and Cleveland Orchestra principal trombonist Massimo La Rosa (a native of Sicily) join together in Nino Rota’s Trombone Concerto. (Also on the program, Rachmaninoff’s The Isle of the Dead and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 6).

It gets even better with an Italian composer in the mix. “Two Italians in Cleveland playing music by an Italian composer,” Noseda said. “The ingredients are intriguing.” “When I found out that my solo debut would be conducted by Mr. Noseda,” La Rosa recalled, “I immediately thought to myself that the Rota concerto would be the right thing to share with our audiences.” There are also parallels between composer, conductor and soloist. Both Rota and Noseda were born in Milan, and the first performance of the concerto took place in 1974, the year La Rosa was born. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra: Fridays @ 7 with Bela Fleck, Banjo Virtuoso (December 7)

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by Alexandra A. Vago

The ClevelandFLECK-Bela Orchestra’s KeyBank Fridays@7 concert series began in 2009 as a way to create a new concert experience for new patrons and introduce current patrons to musics of the world. As part of this season’s series, Giancarlo Guerrero led the Cleveland Orchestra in an exhilarating exhibition of American music for a nearly sold-out Severance Hall on Friday, December 7.

Fridays@7 is really three concert experiences in one. The 6:00 pm pre-concert in the Reinberger Chamber Hall featured folk music from Eastern Europe performed by Harmonia. The main event highlighted American music with Short Ride in a Fast Machine by Adams, An American in Paris by Gershwin, and Béla Fleck’s Concerto for Banjo and Orchestra. The Bogomolny-Kozerefski Grand Foyer housed the after-party, which showcased contemporary music from New Orleans performed by Mark Mullins, trombone; Roland Guerin, bass; and Johnny Vidacovich, drums. [Read more…]

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