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Cleveland Orchestra delivers powerful performances of Beethoven, Janáček (Mar. 13)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — This week’s Cleveland Orchestra programs were to have featured soprano Asmik Grigorian in Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. But when Grigorian withdrew last week for personal reasons, the focus changed to works by Beethoven while keeping intact the original theme of darkness into light.

On Thursday, March 13, music director Franz Welser-Möst wasted no time arriving at what would usually be a concert’s main event. The very first notes that rang out in Severance Music Center formed the iconic four-note motif known around the world — the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Yes, one of the most famous classical music pieces ever written opened the program instead of closing it. It’s an unconventional programming choice — but after all, Beethoven’s Fifth is a piece that needs little introduction. At least not today.

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Cleveland Orchestra marks Ravel’s 150th birthday with masterful performance (Mar. 6)

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by Peter Feher

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — When Maurice Ravel visited Northeast Ohio in 1928, not everything went according to plan. The French composer had a reputation for being far more brilliant on paper than in person. Nikolai Sokoloff, then music director of The Cleveland Orchestra, would recount afterward how Ravel came late to rehearsal, conducted his pieces clumsily, and left listeners somewhat confused.

So, it’s entirely fitting that this weekend’s concerts at Severance Music Center, which mark the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, should be entrusted to more polished hands.

Music director Franz Welser-Möst was back on the podium in Mandel Concert Hall on Thursday, March 6, presiding over a masterful performance that made a virtue of restraint. Tasteful extravagance may be more typical of Ravel’s style, but The Cleveland Orchestra has a way with refinement. And so does Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, the evening’s soloist, who gave a sensitive, at times subdued account of the composer’s Concerto in G Major.

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The Cleveland Orchestra performs Schubert: light and dark collide (May 12)

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by Stephanie Manning

Many musicians will remember exactly what they were rehearsing in March of 2020, when the music suddenly stopped. For The Cleveland Orchestra, that unlucky piece was Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, which at the time was only heard by a private audience of staff members. More than two years later, the Orchestra finally gave the work the live performance it deserved on May 12 — and the seats at Severance Music Center were plenty full.

Conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, the Orchestra was in their element for the popular symphony, also known as “The Great” — a nickname born not out of a value designation, but to differentiate it from a shorter work of Schubert’s also in C Major. Clocking in at just under an hour in total, the four demanding movements are a test of endurance, which prompted the woodwind section to enlist some assistant players.

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MusiCLE Yours to present social justice-themed “Porchestra Concert” at Cozad-Bates House

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Last summer, according to Cleveland Orchestra violinist Isabel Trautwein, musicians from the Orchestra played 90-100 outdoor events. “These were driveway concerts and porch concerts with friends and students,” Trautwein said by telephone from her farm in Geneva (where she recently put on a program called Barnegie Hall.) “We thought, why don’t we give that a name, so that it has more of an impact, and so we all know we’re part of something larger.”

That something larger has become MusiCLE Yours, an initiative by a group of Orchestra members to share solo and chamber music — particularly but not exclusively by under-represented composers — with a range of communities throughout the area.

They started with recordings posted on YouTube, including a few that were filmed at the Crawford Auto Aviation Museum at the Cleveland History Center, with vintage cars visible in the background.

The next undertaking from MusiCLE Yours takes place at another venue off the beaten path, this time live, outdoors, and themed around social justice. “I can’t help with all the woes in our world, but I think we musicians — we must tackle the social justice issues surrounding our art form, especially classical music,” Trautwein said.

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Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom: Blomstedt’s Beethoven 7 (Aug. 1)

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by Peter Feher 

From the podium, Herbert Blomstedt is always proving that there are new insights to be found in even the most well-trod pieces.

The 94-year-old Swedish American conductor, whose big American post was with the San Francisco Symphony several decades ago, returned to Blossom Music Center on Sunday, August 1, with the kind of austere program only he can pull off.

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RRCMS ends season with three quintets (May 17)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s live-streamed 62nd season came to a rousing conclusion on Monday, May 17, when five wind players and a pianist came together around quintets by masters of old and new.

Anton Reicha’s 24 woodwind quintets don’t have the most exciting reputation, but his Op. 88 in E-flat is superb: beautiful, varied, and in the right hands, compellingly picturesque. Those right hands (and left ones too) were those of flutist Mary Kay Fink, oboist Frank Rosenwein, clarinetist Robert Woolfrey, hornist Richard King, and bassoonist Barrick Stees, who together gave a first-rate performance, both deeply polished and deeply fun.

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Rocky River Chamber Music Society: five winds & a pianist

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Lately, wind players have only been sighted here and there on the calendar, and have mostly performed all on their lonesome. That makes the finale to the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s 62nd season an extra special occasion for anyone with a fondness for music of the lungs.

Five members of The Cleveland Orchestra’s wind section — flutist Mary Kay Fink, oboist Frank Rosenwein, clarinetist Robert Woolfrey, hornist Richard King, and bassoonist Barrick Stees — will come together on the stage of West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church on Monday, May 17 at 7:30 pm for a live-streamed concert that can be viewed on Facebook or YouTube.

On opposite ends of the program are woodwind quintets by Anton Reicha and Valerie Coleman, two composers who also come from opposite ends of the genre’s history. In between, pianist Christina Dahl will replace Fink to showcase a different but related species of quintet, represented here by Beethoven.

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Cleveland Orchestra: In Focus 10 harks back to 19th century format (May 6)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Before orchestras settled on the time-honored program formula of overture, concerto, and symphony — which many still observe — musical evenings were more varied and could include solo songs, piano pieces, and chamber music, in addition to orchestral works.

In the tenth episode of In Focus, which debuted on May 6, The Cleveland Orchestra has revived that tradition on a small scale, programming an arrangement for oboe and piano of a Ravel solo piano piece and following it by a set of variations for string orchestra — a lovely combination of varied works that makes a satisfying, one-hour program. [Read more…]

fp Creative’s Long Distance: live performance and collaboration

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The response to the pandemic from fp Creative has been both sensitive and — well, creative. The organization has devoted a page of its website to relief fund resources, and has divided its programming into two categories of “Long Distance” offerings: live performances, and new artistic collaborations taking place over the web.

“Collabs” is the name they’ve coined for the latter endeavor. In early April, they sent out a request for submissions of short recordings from instrumentalists, poets, and sound designers “to capture the sounds of their new daily,” as the organization writes on its website. A handful of producers and composers then sampled those submissions, weaving them into pieces of music.

The first — and very striking — release came on Friday, May 1, and is available to stream here. It takes the form of an album in collage style, with eight short tracks representing a spectrum of compositional styles from Will Cayanan, Erica MacLeod, Richard Graham (a.k.a. Signals Under Tests), Seyu, Devin Hinzo, and Graham Rosen.

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Cleveland Orchestra guest conductors lead memorable Concerts (Feb. 23 & 27)

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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…]

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