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The Cleveland Orchestra: Allison Loggins-Hull’s Grit. Grace. Glory.

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by Mike Telin

When Allison Loggins-Hull was named The Cleveland Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow, she hoped that the three-year fellowship would culminate in a large work informed by the city the Orchestra calls home. And she thought the best way to do that was to get to know its people and community organizations.

“It takes time to do this kind of work in a meaningful way,” she told ClevelandClassical.com during a May 2023 interview. “During my initial visit last fall, which was the first time I was ever in Cleveland, I spent time at museums, the Fatima Family Center, Global Cleveland, Karamu House, Cleveland School for the Arts, and The Baseball Heritage Museum. All of these offered very different tastes of Cleveland in an effort to introduce myself and let people know what I was envisioning.”

On Thursday, May 8 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra will present the world premiere of Loggins-Hull’s Grit. Grace. Glory — a musical story inspired by the people and history of Cleveland. The concert also includes Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4. The program will be repeated on Friday at 11:00 am (no Prokofiev) and Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

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.

[Read more…]

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.

[Read more…]

Welser-Möst leads lyrical, hyper-charged Beethoven “Eroica” in Cleveland (Feb. 27)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Franz Welser-Möst was greeted with a hero’s welcome at Severance Music Center on Thursday, February 27, by the large and appreciative audience — even before a note of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony had been played. He acknowledged the genuine warmth in the room, and the occasion of his return to the podium after a medical leave.

Opening the program was Shostakovich’s wintery Violin Concerto No. 2, with Leonidas Kavakos as soloist. It’s a mostly gloomy work not easily shaken from its brooding until the Finale — and even then, the raucous dancing is more crazed than jubilant.

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Cleveland Orchestra announces major changes to November’s Beethoven Concerto Cycle

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Monday morning, The Cleveland Orchestra announced that both its music director and the featured soloist for its forthcoming Beethoven Concerto Cycle have withdrawn from the seven-concert series at Severance Music Center, scheduled for November 6-17.

In a press release, the Orchestra wrote that “Franz Welser-Möst will be unable to conduct the upcoming three weeks of performances in Cleveland due to ongoing medical treatment. The Cleveland Orchestra family greatly looks forward to his return to the podium when he is fully recovered.

“Following Franz Welser-Möst’s cancellation, pianist Igor Levit withdrew from his planned performances of the Beethoven piano concertos.”

Five pianists — Sir Stephen Hough, Yunchan Lim, Garrick Ohlsson, Minsoo Sohn, and Orion Weiss — will now be featured in the five concertos and Triple Concerto. Assistant Conductor Daniel Reith will conduct. The previously announced programs will remain the same.

Here is the revised schedule for the Beethoven Concerto Cycle. [Read more…]

Cellist Julia Hagen to make Cleveland Orchestra debut in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto

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by Mike Telin

“When I think about playing with the Cleveland Orchestra, it still sounds like a dream,” cellist Julia Hagen said during a recent Zoom conversation. “It still feels surreal, but it’s going to be such an honor to share the stage with an orchestra that has so much history —  and I’m very excited to get to meet them and to work with them.”

On Wednesday, November 6 at 7:30 pm, Hagen will make her Cleveland Orchestra debut at Severance Music Center when she joins pianist Orion Weiss and violinist Augustin Hadelich for a performance of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.

Under the direction of Daniel Reith, the evening will also include Sir Stephen Hough as soloist in the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 3. The program, which will be repeated on November 7 at 7:30 pm, is the first of three that feature all six of Beethoven’s concertos for the instrument. The series runs through November 17. Tickets are available online.

Hagen, the 2024 winner of the UBS Young Artist Award, said that although she has not previously worked with Hadelich, she is a huge fan of his playing. “I can’t wait to meet him and because the two string parts in the Triple Concerto have so many things to work on before we meet with the orchestra, I’m very curious to see how that process will go.”

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: A conversation with violin soloist Frank Peter Zimmermann

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by Mike Telin

After a six-year absence, violinist Frank Peter Zimmerman will return to the Severance Music Center stage on Thursday, September 19  to play Robert Schumann’s concerto with Osmo Vänskä and The Cleveland Orchestra in the first performance of the new season. The program will be repeated on Sunday the 22nd at 3:00 pm.

“I’m extremely happy to be returning to Cleveland. It’s my favorite orchestra in the States and maybe the world, and the public is also special,” the violinist said in a telephone conversation from his home in Germany. “I have a long relationship with them —  I think my first concerts were in 1987 with Christoph von Dohnányi  — and I have many friends there. So it’s going to be a joy to come back for the season opener.”

The Schumann concerto is a musically complicated piece with an intriguing history. He wrote it very late in his career for Joseph Joachim, and although the violinist was in possession of the manuscript for the rest of his life, he never performed the Concerto. It finally received its premiere by George Kulenkampff and the Berlin Philharmonic on 26 November 1937.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra weathers the storm with Tchaikovsky’s Fifth at Blossom (Aug. 17)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com.

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — The Cleveland Orchestra hasn’t had much luck with the weather lately.

Last week’s performance with John Legend started late, got put on pause, and was eventually canceled after strong storms moved over Blossom Music Center. August 17 presented another uncertain forecast, but the Orchestra was determined to forge ahead if possible. And this time, they weathered the storm.

The turbulent weather — which delayed the concert by 30 minutes — made the marquee work feel especially fitting for the occasion. Written during a tempestuous period in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s life, his Symphony No. 5 explores the composer’s inner turmoil and his struggles against the forces of Fate.

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra revives Summers at Severance series

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by Stephanie Manning

Four years on from pandemic disruptions, some ensembles are still working on returning to 100% of their pre-2020 programming. Case in point from this summer: The Cleveland Orchestra, which is reviving its Summers at Severance series for the first time in five years.

“As we’ve been coming back to ‘normal,’ there is definitely an appetite for more of our classical offerings during the summer,” artistic administrator Michael Gandlmayr said in a recent interview. While the Orchestra’s home at this time of year is unquestionably Blossom Music Center, performing a few times at Severance Music Center gives audiences more options to enjoy their programming. “It’s also a great opportunity for us to see some new and returning faces, both on the podium as well as soloists.”

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: Mozart’s Magic Flute (May 16)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In what has become a welcome springtime tradition at Severance Music Center, Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra devoted their season finale to opera. Mozart’s The Magic Flute contained many delights — a beautiful score, superb singing, imaginative staging by Nikolaus Habjan, spare but thought-provoking sets — in such quality as to perhaps win over even the most opera-resistant. And maybe to prompt the timeless question: doesn’t Cleveland deserve a full-time, professional opera company? I attended opening night on May 16.

A centerpiece of the second Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival, Magic Flute shares the festival’s theme of “power.” The characters of Tamino, Papageno, and Pamina eventually vanquish an angry queen, though the allegorical plot is more a parable of growing up and learning to love and trust. There are also initiation rites, a rescue, and a conversion to the high ideals of another powerful figure, Sarastro. [Read more…]

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