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The Cleveland Orchestra:
Bach, Mendelssohn, Masks, and Mysteries — a conversation with Nicholas McGegan

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by Mike Telin

If it’s late November, it must be time for Nicholas McGegan to return to Severance Hall. “This Cleveland thing is becoming a Thanksgiving tradition,” the affable conductor said during a recent telephone conversation. “This will be my third visit around this time in three years.”

Last week, McGegan led The Cleveland Orchestra in rehearsals and recording sessions of music from the late 17th to early 19th centuries. The program, titled “Inventions: Bach to Mendelssohn,” will be released on Thursday, December 10 at 7:00 pm as part of the Orchestra’s “In Focus” series and will be available exclusively on the Adella app. Click here for information. The stream will be accessible on demand until March 10, 2021.

Interestingly, McGegan’s visit to Cleveland was not on his schedule until a few weeks ago, when COVID restrictions necessitated a change in the Orchestra’s plans. The pandemic had also forced a change in McGegan’s calendar. “In October I was supposed to be on a month-long tour in the Netherlands and Belgium conducting the Mozart Requiem, and then I was to have had a month in Australia performing Messiah, and all of that disappeared.”

But as fortune would have it, opportunities began to knock at the door. “I’ve been to the Houston Symphony twice, now I’m coming to Cleveland, then going back to Houston and on to Dallas. None of this was on the books, so I am incredibly happy and grateful that the work I lost has been replaced.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra:
Episode 3 of “In Focus”

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by Mike Telin

“We have Severance Hall and we have Blossom Music Center, and Adella feels like our third home — a digital home for the 21st century,” Cleveland Orchestra chief brand officer Ross Binnie said during a recent telephone conversation.

On Thursday, November 12 at 7:00 pm, The Cleveland Orchestra will present “In Focus: Episode 3.” Recorded at Severance on the 22nd and 23rd of October under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst, the program features Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D with Emanuel Ax as soloist, and Bartók’s Divertimento for Strings. Click here to access the Orchestra’s Adella streaming platform (available on demand following the premiere), and here to purchase Adella premium.

Although behind-the-scenes discussions had centered around the creation of digital concerts for some time, Binnie noted that “like our ‘On a Personal Note’ podcasts, creating ‘In Focus’ was accelerated because of the pandemic.”

While acknowledging that they are not the only orchestra to offer their own digital platform, Binnie does see Cleveland’s as being a little different from the others. “We’re all trying to tell our stories, but I think ours is more focused on our music-making than our history, although there is a part of the site that’s devoted to archives.”

Ultimately, when audiences cannot attend in-person performances, Adella provides a way for the Orchestra to stay in touch with their donors, subscribers, and single-ticket buyers. “We typically play to 400,000 people in a year, and Adella helps us transport our story across the world. It helps us keep in touch: it’s great for our audiences in Miami, it’s great for our audiences in Europe and Asia — they can see what we’re doing the rest of the year, which I think is a tremendous asset.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra In Focus 2: Bronfman & Beethoven (Oct. 29)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Severance Hall team made just a few tweaks to the video production of Episode 2 in its In Focus Series that debuted on October 29. Instead of the colorful lighting that gave a bluish tint to Respighi and bathed Tchaikovsky in red for Episode 1, the walls of the stage were washed in a subtle peach hue. And instead of standing for a silent ovation from an empty hall, players remained in their seats for a fadeout at the end of both works on the program. What remained the same was the high level of playing from the well-distanced string section, and the superb quality of the sound. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra returns to Severance Hall — via Adella (Oct. 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

When the pandemic arrived on our shores and in-person performances were banned, musical organizations scrambled to preserve some sense of normalcy either by raiding their archives or by creating content in novel ways under the strictures of physical distancing. These efforts have resulted in a quantity of online offerings of wildly varying quality.

Though it had amassed a vast trove of audio over the decades, The Cleveland Orchestra has come late to the game in the video department. Even so, the organization wasn’t about to rush to produce the equivalent of home movies to keep its patrons engaged while live events were on hold. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra introduces streaming platform “Adella”

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by Daniel Hathaway

First came Apple’s Siri (if she didn’t know the answer to a question, she’d helpfully reply, “I can look that up for you on the internet”). Then Amazon’s Alexa offered hands-free connections to the web (“Alexa, play NPR”) — while perhaps also listening in on our conversations.

Now, The Cleveland Orchestra has introduced Adella, named after its founder and first general manager, Adella Prentiss Hugues. She will knowledgeably serve as curator for all of the Orchestra’s digital content. That includes premium items — the In Focus Concert Series and Cleveland Orchestra Showcase — as well as free video from the Orchestra’s archives, expeditions behind the scenes, and “On A Personal Note” podcasts.

Central to Adella’s mission is bringing musicians back to Severance Hall to make music for the Orchestra’s patrons for the first time since the pandemic threw a spanner into the works in March. The In Focus series, which begins this Thursday, October 15, will comprise five, one-hour programs recorded mostly by the Orchestra’s strings, masked and physically distanced on the Severance stage. Wind players will be used sparingly. A few souls will be invited to attend, but most will watch via the stream. [Read more…]

CD Review:
Rands at Oberlin

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by Mike Telin

To say that the music of Bernard Rands is tinged with Ravel and Debussy doesn’t tell the whole story. In reality, his music extends beyond that into a post-modern, impressionistic world. On the recently-released CD, Rands at Oberlin, the composer’s engaging musical voice is brought to life in stellar performances by Robert Walters of the Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra (2015) and by tenor Magnus Staveland of the Pulitzer prize-winning Canti del Sole (1983). [Read more…]

Sun Valley Music Festival: Conversations with Marc Damoulakis and Si-Yan Darren Li 

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by Mike Telin

With the absence of Northeast Ohio’s annual feast of live summertime classical music offerings, I’m thankful that we live in a time when technology can help fill the void in the artistic soul. That technology can also take you to far-off festivals that you’ve always wished you could attend, but never have had the opportunity.

From Monday, July 27, to Wednesday, August 19, you can attend the 36th annual Sun Valley Music Festival Summer Season for free from the comfort of your own home, or backyard. The free, one-time-only webcasts were developed by Festival Music Director Alasdair Neale in collaboration with Creative Director James Darrah, who served as stage director for The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2015 production of Richard Strauss’ Daphne.

The performances, recorded in Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Houston, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Rochester, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Toronto, feature single-location, socially distanced performances and multi-location, video-synced performances which will also include commentary by Alasdair Neale and conversations with guest artists and Orchestra musicians. The free, one-time-only concerts will be broadcast at 8:30 pm Eastern time on the Idaho-based Festival’s website. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Musicians’ “Summer Salute to Healthcare Workers”

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by Mike Telin

Never has it been more important to thank a healthcare worker than the present. And for the past four-plus months, people have expressed their gratitude to workers on the frontline of the Coronavirus Pandemic in a multitude of ways, from banging on pots to flyovers by the U.S. Navy Blue Angels.

For the past six weeks, more than 40 members of The Cleveland Orchestra have shown their appreciation with a “Summer Salute to Healthcare Workers.” The idea for the concerts came from Lynne Ramsey, the Orchestra’s first assistant principal viola.

“During the early part of the shutdown, Lynne saw military planes doing flybys over hospitals as a salute to healthcare workers,” violinist Isabel Trautwein said during a telephone conversation. “So she thought, what if musicians would do ‘playbys’?” [Read more…]

CD Review
The Cleveland Orchestra: A New Century, Vol. 3

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by Jarrett Hoffman

A shared sense of the epic ties together the final two works of A New Century, the three-part live album from Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra that is also the ensemble’s inaugural release on its own record label.

We begin with the world premiere recording of Okeanos, Bernd Richard Deutsch’s concerto for organ and orchestra, featuring Paul Jacobs as soloist. The title refers not only to the Titan of Greek mythology, but also “to an idea of immense (and sometimes unfathomable) greatness and breadth, which conjures up in my mind the thought of the organ,” as Deutsch writes in his notes. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra to introduce weekly podcast, “On a Personal Note”

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A new weekly podcast series from Severance Hall will feature personal perspectives and illuminating views about Cleveland Orchestra recordings. Available beginning on Thursday, April 16, the first season of “On a Personal Note” will comprise ten episodes.

In the first program, “The Sound of Crisis,” Music Director Franz Welser-Möst recalls the conflicting emotions he experienced leading the last performance before Severance Hall was shuttered due to the pandemic. On Friday morning, March 13, under the first phase of restrictions ordered by the governor, he conducted Schubert’s “Great” Symphony in C for an audience of a few staff members who heard what was originally supposed to be a public concert. Further limitations on the number of people allowed to gather mandated the cancellation of the rest of the Orchestra’s season.

Welser-Möst described that morning as a surreal experience. “We played in that moment, very aware of the music’s meaning and with the beginning of our understanding about what was happening around us. The ability to share this story in the ‘On a Personal Note’ podcast is a moving opportunity, and a rare time to verbalize the emotions we feel as artists every time we perform.” [Read more…]

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