by Guytano Parks

On 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…]

by Timothy Robson

Severance 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…]