by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Orchestra unpacked its bags just long enough between its extended European concert tour and its next Miami Residency to play a three-concert set at Severance Hall from November 6 to 8. Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda was at the helm for colorful, virtuosic music by Goffredo Petrassi and Sergei Rachmaninoff, but the centerpiece of Saturday evening’s concert was a breathtaking trip through Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the imperturbable Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos. [Read more…]
Franz Welser-Möst led the apparently indefatigable musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra in the third of four challenging, all-in-a-row concerts on Friday evening, May 29, major attractions on the agenda for the League of American Orchestras Cleveland meeting. Olivier Messiaen’s dazzling Chronochromie and Antonín Dvořák’s infrequently performed fifth symphony made different but compelling connections to the natural world, while Messiaen’s theologically-infused Hymne opened a portal to the heavenly realms. 
They should do this more often. Making only their second group appearance, the Cleveland Wind Octet — including members of The Cleveland Orchestra and a couple of esteemed local friends — brought the crowd to its feet at Chagrin Falls’ United Methodist Church last Friday. Performances of a classic, an arrangement, and a new piece composed by one of the group’s own were sublime. 
The Cleveland Orchestra built its second subscription weekend around the phenomenal Chinese pianist, Lang Lang, who treated Severance Hall audiences to Richard Strauss’s Burleske on Thursday and Friday evenings and Sunday afternoon, Chopin’s Andante spianato & Grand Polonaise brillante on Thursday and Sunday, and no doubt blew the patrons of the Orchestra’s annual benefit evening away with the first Tchaikovsky concerto on Saturday. 