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Cleveland Orchestra’s In Focus 7 marks COVID-19 anniversary with emotional Shostakovich and Messiaen 

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by Daniel Hathaway

Episode 7 of The Cleveland Orchestra’s pre-recorded In Focus series is the shortest so far, clocking in at only 37 minutes. But the emotional impact of Dmitri Shostakovich’s bleak Chamber Symphony in c followed by the calm, shimmering hopefulness of Olivier Messiaen’s Le Christ, lumière du Paradis (from Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà) is out of all proportion to the length of the music.

The Shostakovich is an arrangement by Rudolf Barshai for string orchestra of the composer’s String Quartet No. 8, a work directly inspired by the firebombing of Dresden, an attack toward the end of World War II that claimed more victims than Hiroshima. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra’s In Focus 6: Carmen-Suite

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by Jarrett Hoffman

In Episode 6 of the In Focus series, which premiered online on March 11, Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra devote themselves to a single work: Rodion Shchedrin’s 1967 Carmen-Suite. This is no basic retread of Bizet’s famous opera. Instead, the 13-movement ballet score does something dramatic, but something that’s sadly fitting for the pandemic: it eliminates all the winds, and gifts the percussion section a bundle of new toys.

Shchedrin makes use of those extra capabilities right away. Brilliantly, the piece begins and ends with “Habanera,” as heard faintly from the tubular bells under the gentle touch of Marc Damoulakis. Other particularly memorable moments come from the marimba, which provides an intriguing melodic contrast to the strings. But even in the background, instruments like the tom-toms and the guiro bring a consistently fresh and modern color to this piece.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra “In Focus” 3: Ax plays Haydn, FWM leads Bartók

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by Daniel Hathaway

Full-length symphony orchestra concerts normally feature three works and run nearly two hours including intermission. The pandemic, which has changed so many things, has truncated programs, both to shorten possible exposure time and to avoid the social mixing of a mid-concert interval.

Thus the third “In Focus” performance by The Cleveland Orchestra that debuted on the Adella platform on November 12 lasts only 54 minutes from stem to stern, including a conversation between Emanuel Ax and Orchestra cellist Martha Baldwin, and features only two highly contrasting works led by music director Franz Welser-Möst. The performances continue to be available on the Adella platform until March.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra:
Episode 3 of “In Focus”

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by Mike Telin

“We have Severance Hall and we have Blossom Music Center, and Adella feels like our third home — a digital home for the 21st century,” Cleveland Orchestra chief brand officer Ross Binnie said during a recent telephone conversation.

On Thursday, November 12 at 7:00 pm, The Cleveland Orchestra will present “In Focus: Episode 3.” Recorded at Severance on the 22nd and 23rd of October under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst, the program features Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D with Emanuel Ax as soloist, and Bartók’s Divertimento for Strings. Click here to access the Orchestra’s Adella streaming platform (available on demand following the premiere), and here to purchase Adella premium.

Although behind-the-scenes discussions had centered around the creation of digital concerts for some time, Binnie noted that “like our ‘On a Personal Note’ podcasts, creating ‘In Focus’ was accelerated because of the pandemic.”

While acknowledging that they are not the only orchestra to offer their own digital platform, Binnie does see Cleveland’s as being a little different from the others. “We’re all trying to tell our stories, but I think ours is more focused on our music-making than our history, although there is a part of the site that’s devoted to archives.”

Ultimately, when audiences cannot attend in-person performances, Adella provides a way for the Orchestra to stay in touch with their donors, subscribers, and single-ticket buyers. “We typically play to 400,000 people in a year, and Adella helps us transport our story across the world. It helps us keep in touch: it’s great for our audiences in Miami, it’s great for our audiences in Europe and Asia — they can see what we’re doing the rest of the year, which I think is a tremendous asset.” [Read more…]

CD Review
The Cleveland Orchestra:
Schubert & Křenek

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The latest entry from Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra on the ensemble’s own record label brings another high contrast into view. Franz Schubert’s spirited and expansive “Great” Symphony in C (1826) sits alongside the ten miniatures that make up Ernst Křenek’s atonal and highly atmospheric Static and Ecstatic (1972). In brilliant performances captured live at Severance Hall just before the coronavirus shutdown in March, each work packs quite an artistic punch, though they both require a measure of patience from the listener.

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Cleveland Orchestra In Focus 2: Bronfman & Beethoven (Oct. 29)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Severance Hall team made just a few tweaks to the video production of Episode 2 in its In Focus Series that debuted on October 29. Instead of the colorful lighting that gave a bluish tint to Respighi and bathed Tchaikovsky in red for Episode 1, the walls of the stage were washed in a subtle peach hue. And instead of standing for a silent ovation from an empty hall, players remained in their seats for a fadeout at the end of both works on the program. What remained the same was the high level of playing from the well-distanced string section, and the superb quality of the sound. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra returns to Severance Hall — via Adella (Oct. 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

When the pandemic arrived on our shores and in-person performances were banned, musical organizations scrambled to preserve some sense of normalcy either by raiding their archives or by creating content in novel ways under the strictures of physical distancing. These efforts have resulted in a quantity of online offerings of wildly varying quality.

Though it had amassed a vast trove of audio over the decades, The Cleveland Orchestra has come late to the game in the video department. Even so, the organization wasn’t about to rush to produce the equivalent of home movies to keep its patrons engaged while live events were on hold. [Read more…]

CD Review
The Cleveland Orchestra: A New Century, Vol. 3

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by Jarrett Hoffman

A shared sense of the epic ties together the final two works of A New Century, the three-part live album from Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra that is also the ensemble’s inaugural release on its own record label.

We begin with the world premiere recording of Okeanos, Bernd Richard Deutsch’s concerto for organ and orchestra, featuring Paul Jacobs as soloist. The title refers not only to the Titan of Greek mythology, but also “to an idea of immense (and sometimes unfathomable) greatness and breadth, which conjures up in my mind the thought of the organ,” as Deutsch writes in his notes. [Read more…]

CD Review — The Cleveland Orchestra: A New Century, Vol. 2

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by Jarrett Hoffman

From Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra comes A New Century, a three-disc, live album that inaugurates the ensemble’s new record label. Each disc matches a newer work with an older one, and in Volume Two, we find another fascinating pairing: one piece written after a trip to Italy, the other born out of a horror story.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra to introduce weekly podcast, “On a Personal Note”

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A new weekly podcast series from Severance Hall will feature personal perspectives and illuminating views about Cleveland Orchestra recordings. Available beginning on Thursday, April 16, the first season of “On a Personal Note” will comprise ten episodes.

In the first program, “The Sound of Crisis,” Music Director Franz Welser-Möst recalls the conflicting emotions he experienced leading the last performance before Severance Hall was shuttered due to the pandemic. On Friday morning, March 13, under the first phase of restrictions ordered by the governor, he conducted Schubert’s “Great” Symphony in C for an audience of a few staff members who heard what was originally supposed to be a public concert. Further limitations on the number of people allowed to gather mandated the cancellation of the rest of the Orchestra’s season.

Welser-Möst described that morning as a surreal experience. “We played in that moment, very aware of the music’s meaning and with the beginning of our understanding about what was happening around us. The ability to share this story in the ‘On a Personal Note’ podcast is a moving opportunity, and a rare time to verbalize the emotions we feel as artists every time we perform.” [Read more…]

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