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The Cleveland Orchestra: Ilya Gidalevich shares insights into the 2024-25 Severance Season

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by Mike Telin
Kevin McLaughlin contributed to this article

During “Fanfare: A Patron Appreciation Event,” a special unveiling of The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2024-25 season at Severance Music Center on Friday, March 15, music director Franz Welser-Möst was joined onstage by president and CEO André Gremillet and violinist Katherine Bormann.

The conversation was lively. Welser-Möst was particularly excited to talk about soprano Asmik Grigorian, who will perform Strauss’ Four Last Songs and the final scene from Puccini’s Suor Angelica (March 13 and 15). “Not since Netrebko has there been a singer with that kind of charisma,” he said, adding that during the Salzburg performances of Suor Angelica “there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.” [Read more…]

Pianist Garrick Ohlsson, Cleveland Orchestra team up for refined, unfussy evening of Mozart (Mar. 14)

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By Kevin McLaughlin, Cleveland Classical
Originally published in Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Though we missed hearing pianist Igor Levit, who withdrew due to illness, it was a pleasure, as always, to welcome Garrick Ohlsson to Severance Music Center on Thursday, March 14. With Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra musicians as partners, the pianist strode onstage to render as refined and unfussy a performance of a Mozart Piano Concerto as one might hope to hear.

The Concerto No. 27 in B-flat, K. 595 — Mozart’s last — was composed in 1788, though not performed until March of 1791. Many keyboard players like to ascribe to Mozart the same pathos that attached itself to Schubert in his final years of life, but Ohlsson knows better. Mozart’s music rarely reflects immediate personal crises, and this particular concerto wasn’t designed for that anyway. (Photo by Yevhen Gulenko)

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra revels in wild Weimar-era symphonies by Sergi Prokofiev and Anton Webern (Jan.17)

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Originally published on Cleveland.com

Photo by Roger Mastroianni

by Daniel Hathaway, Cleveland Classical

CLEVELAND, Ohio — In his Concert Overview for The Cleveland Orchestra performance at Severance Music Center on Wednesday evening, January 17, music director Franz Welser-Möst wrote:

“Tonight’s program was conceived as part of Carnegie Hall’s festival, Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice, which looks at the 15 years of the Weimar era (1918–33), some of the wildest and most innovative for the arts in history.”

The program, which will be repeated tonight (Thursday) before the Orchestra travels to New York for a two-day Carnegie residency, included brilliant performances of wildly contrasting, two-movement works by Sergei Prokofiev and Anton Webern that both bore the title of “Symphony,” though they couldn’t have been more divergent in intent and style.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra premiere if ‘Whereas the Reality Trembles’ percussion extravaganza steals the show from Mozart and Tchaikovsky (Oct. 5)

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Photo: Roger Mastroianni

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

by Kevin McLaughlin

The world premiere of a percussion extravaganza stole the show on Thursday night in Mandel Hall at Severance Music Center, and may have set a record for the most percussion ever assembled on one stage.

Beginning the concert, Franz Welser-Möst’s account of Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 was airy and buoyant, despite larger-than-fashionable forces (42 strings). The outer movements were joyous and rhythmically meticulous, and the Orchestra’s ability to coalesce and balance was uncanny.

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Cleveland Orchestra and pianist Daniil Trifonov deliver thrilling season opener of Brahms and Prokofiev (Sept 28)

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This article was originally published on Cleveland.com (photos by Roger Mastroianni.)

By Daniel Hathaway

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The time-honored classical program format of three works was missing its overture at Severance Music Center on Thursday evening as Franz Welser-Möst led the Cleveland Orchestra in its official season opener. But a gargantuan German piano concerto and a stentorian Russian Symphony added up to a full evening overflowing with superlatives.

Not to mention the impressive pianistic pyrotechnics of international phenomenon and local hero Daniil Trifonov, or the enthralling sonorities created by the Cleveland Orchestra even when the material itself turned menacing.

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Puccini’s Gold Rush Opera centers American Dream Festival (May 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

During his visit to New York in 1907 to supervise the Metropolitan Opera’s first productions of Madama Butterfly and Manon Lescaut, Giacomo Puccini got the idea of writing an opera to be set during the 1849 California Gold Rush after seeing David Belasco’s 1905 play, The Girl of the Golden West. The opera received its world premiere by the MET in 1910.

This week, three concert performances of La Fanciulla del West serve as the centerpiece of The Cleveland Orchestra’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival this month at Severance Music Center and around town, a richly-programmed look into the concept of what James Truslow Adams dubbed “The American Dream” in his 1931 Great Depression Era book, The Epic of America.

For the Cleveland production, which opened on May 13, the Orchestra is front and center. The principal singers perform from a raised platform connected to the organ chamber whose front pipes have been removed for entrances and exits. Secondary characters sing from another platform on stage right, and the male chorus is located on the other side. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: vivid Pictures & more under Welser-Möst (March 3)

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by Daniel Hathaway

If these fingers were crafting a marketing piece for The Cleveland Orchestra’s concerts on the weekend of March 2 rather than a review, they might be tempted to entice readers to attend with such alliterative flights of prose as “Sizzling Sonic Spectacular — and more.” But in retrospect, the Orchestra’s performance of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition was just that.

The huge orchestra that filled the Mandel stage after intermission on Sunday played the closing pages of Maurice Ravel’s brilliant orchestration of the original solo piano score with spacious grandeur, the kind of treatment “The Great Gate of Kiev” deserves in these perilous times.

Franz Welser-Möst led the audience through the gallery of Victor Hartmann’s idiosyncratic art like a skilled docent, pointing up interesting details and drawing precise playing from his orchestral colleagues. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: Berg and Schubert intertwined (Jan. 13)

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by Stephanie Manning

Perhaps Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 is more complete than its “Unfinished” moniker implies. After all, the composer wrote and orchestrated two full movements, creating a kind of standalone half-symphony. But Severance Music Center audiences heard this work in a new way on January 13, when The Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst interlaced Schubert’s two memorable movements with an unexpected partner: Alban Berg’s Three Pieces from Lyric Suite.

The strings-only work by Berg has made relatively frequent appearances on the Orchestra’s programs. In 2021, the musicians recorded it for the In Focus series, and it appeared again on last year’s European tour. Friday’s rendition maintained the group’s characteristic light and effortless playing, each section blending as much as possible to echo the work’s original form as a string quartet. At fifteen minutes total, the piece is quite short, but the dense encoded musical meanings require some extra-attentive listening. Splitting up the three movements ensured that each one could be appreciated on its own. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra embraces “Resurrection” in stirring season opener (Sep. 29)

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by Stephanie Manning

It’s a sure sign that Severance Hall is going to be packed when the intersection of Euclid Avenue and East Boulevard is clogged six ways to Sunday — or rather, Thursday.

It wasn’t just the traffic. Everything at The Cleveland Orchestra’s concert on September 29 was busier than usual — more people in the audience, more musicians on stage, and one of the longest standing ovations in a while.

Franz Welser-Möst led the Orchestra in the first performance of its 105th season, a stirring account of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. At one hour and 20 minutes, the work is long enough to fill a whole program — and the Orchestra smartly did just that, forgoing any preludes or overtures in favor of presenting the one work without intermission.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, August 16, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Several free events today from the Cooper Violin Competition, the saxophone/woodwind quartet Iron Toys, and West Shore Chorale in a Summer Sing

•A job opening at Firelands, an invitation from Western Reserve Chorale, and auditions for Canton Youth Symphonies

•A profile of Cleveland’s experimental jazz presenting organization New Ghosts

•Almanac: organist and conductor Paul Callaway, Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, and a Richard Strauss premiere at the 1936 Olympics

[Read more…]

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