by Daniel Hathaway
Depending on which of the three Cleveland Orchestra concerts led by Nicholas McGegan you attended last weekend, you got a different combination of pieces. For the Fridays@7 iteration on November 17, there were only two works, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 (“Jeunehomme”) with Marc-André Hamelin, and Symphony No. 36 (“Linz”), both presented in spectacular, flawless performances. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
There were no clinking glasses or telltale scents of hot dogs and Tater Tots on Sunday at Ensemble HD’s performance for Music from The Western Reserve at Christ Episcopal Church in Hudson. Let me explain: Ensemble HD was originally formed by several members of The Cleveland Orchestra to perform classical music gigs at Cleveland’s West Side iconic bar The Happy Dog, with its eclectic mix of entertainment. [Read more…]
by Samantha Spaccasi
The lawn and pavilion of Blossom Music Center hosted an immense crowd on the evening of July 29 for The Cleveland Orchestra’s performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 with pianist David Fray, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2, skillfully conducted by Vasily Petrenko. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The fifth and final faculty concert of the 2017 Kent/Blossom Music Festival in Kent’s Ludwig Concert Hall on Wednesday evening, July 26, contrasted bracing 20th century music for wind duo with a heartwarming Romantic cello sonata. Oboist Frank Rosenwein, bassoonist Barrick Stees, and cellist Richard Weiss stepped out of their normal roles in The Cleveland Orchestra for the occasion, joined by KSU professor Jerry Wong, who contributed refreshingly varied mini-sonatas for solo piano. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Dionysius and Apollo each reigned over half of the Cleveland Orchestra program at Blossom on Saturday evening, July 15 under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst. Albert Roussel’s Suite No. 2 from Bacchus and Ariadne celebrates the invention of wine — for which picnickers on the Blossom lawn will be ever grateful — and Darius Milhaud’s Brazilian-infused ballet Le boeuf sur le toit takes place in a rowdy New York bar during Prohibition. Even with its premonitions of Romanticism and the composer’s signature quirkiness, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 brought a sense of Classical balance to the second half. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
This week The Cleveland Orchestra, under the direction of guest conductor Andrew Davis, will feature three of its principal players as soloists — one in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Oboe Concerto and two in Richard Strauss’s epic tone poem Don Quixote. Concerts at Severance Hall are scheduled for Thursday, April 20 at 7:30 pm, Friday, April 21 at 11:00 am (without the Vaughan Williams), and Saturday, April 22 at 8:00 pm.
The program, which begins with Frederick Delius’s Brigg Fair, An English Rhapsody, will also be presented in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel on Friday, April 21 at 8:00 pm as part of the school’s Artist Recital Series.
TCO principal oboe Frank Rosenwein said that Vaughan Williams’s Concerto for Oboe and Strings, written in 1944, is both pastoral and nostalgic. “He lived through the first world war, and this Concerto was written near the end of the second world war. The piece does cultivate a kinder, gentler world.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
For his next-to-last appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra before taking up his new duties with the Colorado Symphony, associate conductor Brett Mitchell presided over a program of American music on Friday evening at Severance Hall. Two “Third” works were on the program: Aaron Copland’s stirring Third Symphony, and Augusta Read Thomas’s elusive Third Violin Concerto with concertmaster William Preucil as soloist. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Jet lag, Egypt, the long gestation of a new musical language, and the Sea — these disparate elements all had something to do with inspiring the four wildly different pieces that guest conductor Matthias Pintscher brought to Severance Hall on Thursday evening, February 23. If there were few connections to be made between those works, each of them inspired brilliant, committed performances from The Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]
by Neil McCalmont
The sounds of German Romanticism filled Severance Hall on Thursday, February 9, as guest conductor Donald Runnicles led The Cleveland Orchestra in Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in b, “Unfinished,” and Mahler’s epic song-cycle Das Lied von der Erde. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Two rarely-heard works, a duo-piano team making a reappearance after a long hiatus, and a guest conductor who stepped in for an ailing maestro at the last minute to save the scheduled program — all these elements promised more than a little suspense last Thursday evening, February 16 in The Cleveland Orchestra’s concert at Severance Hall. [Read more…]