by Daniel Hathaway
Michael Tilson Thomas succeeded Herbert Blomstedt as music director of the San Francisco Symphony in 1995. In a nice coincidence, Blomstedt turned the tables last month, following Tilson Thomas on the Severance Hall podium during adjacent weeks in February. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Music is said to be a universal language, but it does speak with different accents. When you’re playing music by Jean Sibelius, it’s helpful to have a Finnish conductor on the podium, which is what made Susanna Mälkki’s pair of Cleveland Orchestra concerts so lucid and communicative earlier this month. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
You can usually count on Jakub Hrůša to offer up some Czech music during his guest conducting appearances at Severance Hall. Not this time, but in his recent two weekends of concerts, works by Russian, American, and Austrian composers revealed the conductor’s ability to communicate in multiple musical languages. His readings of Shostakovich and John Adams were as probing and masterful as his takes on Beethoven and Mahler were fresh and surprising, and he brought his colleagues along with him all the way. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
A compact Schubert symphony, the first half of a Prokofiev ballet score, and both neoclassical and full-out-Romantic works by Richard Strauss were on the docket as Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra returned to Severance Hall last weekend to begin the ensemble’s 102nd season. Thursday evening’s subscription concert on September 19 began with a stylish reading of Schubert’s Third Symphony, a spirited work festooned with amiable melodic fragments you probably couldn’t go away whistling, but that gave the 18-year-old composer an abundance of cheerful material to play with.
by Daniel Hathaway
British baritone Simon Keenlyside made the most of his recent visit to Severance Hall, offering an impassioned odyssey through Schubert’s Winterreise with pianist Natalia Katyukova on May 19 in Reinberger Chamber Hall, and bringing revelatory performances of eight Sibelius songs to his guest appearance with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra on Thursday evening, May 23.
by Daniel Hathaway
If their recent three-week Asian tour left The Cleveland Orchestra with any residual fatigue or jet lag, the musicians ignored all that in last weekend’s concerts with French guest conductor Stéphane Denève. Building on the theme of ecstasy, he set a demanding program of works by Jennifer Higdon, James MacMillan, Debussy, and Scriabin in front of the players, and they rose to the occasion brilliantly. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Although the indisposition of violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja deprived Severance Hall audiences last weekend of hearing the concerto that Péter Eötvös wrote in honor of the Columbia astronauts, it provided Spanish pianist Javier Perianes with a second opportunity to solo in Ravel’s G-Major Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
As any brass, woodwind, or low-string player in an orchestra may confess under mild pressure, it can feel profoundly liberating to play music that draws the spotlight away from their colleagues in the violin section, especially for extended periods. Rare though this repertoire may be — Stravinsky favored winds and percussion, and Glass wrote a whole opera without violins — pieces that foreground these parts of the classical instrumentarium do appear at the heart of the canon. Filling the stage for its 60th-Anniversary Gala concert, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society placed conductor James Feddeck at the helm for an event featuring 21 musicians — violists, cellists, bassists, and wind players.
by Mike Telin
“A lot of people say the Dvořák Wind Serenade is his best work,” conductor James Feddeck said during a telephone conversation. “I think the same is true for the Brahms Serenade No. 2. It’s one of his best works. And I think it’s wonderful that this concert is free for Northeast Ohio. When I heard that I said I want to be part of it.”
On Monday, November 19 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society will present a concert titled Gala Serenade Evening featuring these exquisite works by Dvořák and Brahms. James Feddeck conducts members of The Cleveland Orchestra and friends — Saeran St. Christopher and Jessica Sindel, flutes, Sally Sherwin, piccolo, Jeffrey Rathbun and Corbin Stair, oboes, Daniel McKelway and Benjamin Freimuth, clarinets, Barrick Stees and Jonathan Sherwin, bassoons, Richard King, David Brockett, and Meghan Guegold, horns, Wesley Collins, Lembi Veskimets, Eliesha Nelson and Jessica Pasternak, violas, Charles Bernard, Linda Atherton, and Julie King, cellos, and Mark Atherton and Scott Dixon, double bass. And yes, the concert is free.
by Timothy Robson
On Sunday, August 5 at Blossom Music Center, The Cleveland Orchestra played a concise and musically satisfying program of works by three Czech composers: Smetana, Janáček, and Dvořák. British conductor Michael Francis led the stylish performance. With the temperature hovering around a sweltering and humid 87 degrees at concert time, the male members of the orchestra sensibly doffed their usual white dinner jackets for shirtsleeves. Even the tree-surrounded — and usually cooler — Blossom grounds failed to provide much relief from the midsummer heat.