by Timothy Robson
The death of French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez on January 5, 2016, at the age of 90, has prompted a series of remembrances from The Cleveland Orchestra and its members. Boulez was honored by the orchestra just over a year ago at the time of his birthday, and on March 24 at Severance Hall, Franz Welser-Möst led the United States premiere of György Kurtág’s Petite musique solennelle: Homage to Pierre Boulez at 90. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Some of the most arresting concert works don’t end with a bang, but a whisper. Both Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4 dissipated into silence at Severance Hall on Thursday, January 14, as music director Franz Welser-Möst held off the eventual ovations for a long, thoughtful moment. There was a lot to reflect on in The Cleveland Orchestra’s playing of both an enthralling new work and a sprawling Soviet-era symphony. [Read more…]
by Christine Jay
When critically acclaimed soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan’s surprise birthday plans for her friend and novelist Paul Griffiths fell through, she suggested a gift of even greater implications: a project of Griffiths’ words animated by Hannigan’s liquid sound. The end product will be heard on Thursday and Friday, January 14 and 15 in Severance Hall when Hannigan joins Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra in the United States premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you.
This situation, indeed, is an example of collaboration at its finest; a soprano, librettist, and composer each separately became enthralled in telling a story. The bonding narrative is Griffiths’ 2008 novel let me tell you, a work utilizing the 481 words appropriated to Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Told from Ophelia’s point of view, Griffiths depicts her life’s maturation, as she is perpetually caught in a web of royalty and patriarchy until her father’s murder and her subsequent, aqueous suicide. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Beethoven’s music comes in all flavors. On Thursday, January 7 at Severance Hall, Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra — back after a month’s worth of holiday music — delighted a capacity audience with the string orchestra version of one of the composer’s late quartets, the middle child of his five piano concertos, and an occasional piece specially composed to include all the performers involved in the composer’s marathon concert at the Theater-am-Wien on December 22 of 1808. The triptych of pieces, two of them featuring the commanding work of pianist Yefim Bronfman, added up to a thoroughly gratifying evening. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The three programs scheduled by The Cleveland Orchestra last weekend were each colorful in their own right, but the blueprint of works being performed was complicated enough that the program book color-coded each evening to keep patrons apprised about what they were hearing, and in what order. Come to think of it, the orchestra and stage crew probably appreciated those navigational aids as well. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
If The Cleveland Orchestra’s recent performance of Gustav Mahler’s third symphony were a restaurant, it would deserve the maximum three stars in the Michelin Guide (“exceptional…worth a special journey”). Franz Welser-Möst, the Orchestra, two of its choruses, and mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor took a captivated audience on a 95-minute journey into Mahler’s magic world on Thursday evening, October 5, the first of a pair of performances that weekend at Severance Hall, and an experience audiences in Paris and Vienna can look forward to during the Orchestra’s October tour. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Orchestra crossed Wade Lagoon on Sunday afternoon, September 27 to launch two ships on important missions with a single concert. One order of business was to crack a musical champagne bottle across the bow of the Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center at The Temple-Tifereth Israel. The newly renovated University Circle landmark will continue to serve as a space to celebrate major religious holidays and life events while also providing Case Western Reserve University with the first stage in the creation of a long-needed performing arts facility. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart’s last symphony and Richard Strauss’s last tone poem — though he called it a symphony — were splendid choices for the opening concert of The Cleveland Orchestra’s new season last Thursday evening, September 24 at Severance Hall. In these works, both composers were operating at the height of their powers, investing confident brilliance in the “Jupiter” and “Alpine” Symphonies. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
What may be the largest group of Cleveland cultural institutions ever to circle their wagons around a single project will come into play this fall when Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, The Cleveland Orchestra, Facing History and Ourselves, Ideastream, the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, and the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage join together to present Violins of Hope Cleveland.
Four months of concerts, exhibitions, screenings, lectures, theatrical productions, and educational offerings will center around the extraordinary collection of violins amassed by Tel Aviv violinmaker Amnon Weinstein, instruments that managed to survive the Holocaust.
Weinstein, who emigrated from Eastern Europe to open a violin shop in Palestine in 1938, learned after World War II that some four hundred of his family members had perished under the Nazis. Later, he heard a heartfelt account from a survivor who had brought an instrument in for restoration of what the violin and its music had meant to Jews during those horrific days. In 1996 — and now recognized as one of the finest violinmakers in the world — Weinstein decided to put out a call for Holocaust-era violins. To date, he has restored nearly fifty such instruments to playing condition, a collection he dubbed “Violins of Hope.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
A crowd estimated at 10,000 blanketed the lawn and filled the center section of the vast pavilion on Saturday evening, July 11, as The Cleveland Orchestra settled into its Blossom season. The program included striking performances of Olivier Messiaen’s L’Ascension and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 led by music director Franz Welser-Möst. That seemingly odd pairing of pieces added up to an evening of orchestral and choral ecstasy from two very different points of view.