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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.

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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…]

CD Review — The Cleveland Orchestra: A New Century, Vol. 1

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The Cleveland Orchestra is launching its own record label with a major release. Having turned 100 during the 2018-19 season, the ensemble looks ahead with A New Century. The six works across three discs were recorded in concert in Severance Hall under the baton of Music Director Franz Welser-Möst from 2017 to 2019.

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Cleveland Orchestra & Chorus: Mendelssohn & Křenek (Mar. 5)

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by Timothy Robson

Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra presented a very unlikely pairing of musical works this weekend at Severance Hall, Ernst Křenek’s austere and modernist Static and Ecstatic, Op. 214, sharing the program with Felix Mendelssohn’s joyous, life-affirming Lobgesang (“Song of Praise”), Op. 52. In Mendelssohn’s mashup of symphony and cantata, the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus continued their upward trajectory of excellence, joined by soloists Christina Landshamer and Martina Janková, sopranos, and Julian Prégardien, tenor. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra & Chorus: Martina Janková & Lisa Wong talk about Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang

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by Daniel Hathaway

The artistic planners at Severance Hall have taken profit of soprano Martina Janková’s current visit to Cleveland to create a mini-Mendelssohn festival. Janková appeared with Vinay Parmareswaren and the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and Chorus on Sunday evening, March 1 in the motet Hör mein Bitten, and will be featured as a soloist in Lobgesang on March 5, 7, and 8 with The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus led by Franz Welser-Möst.

“I feel at home in Cleveland with my beloved orchestra. I think they are the best in the world,” the Swiss soprano said in a telephone conversation. She’s had plenty of opportunity to get to know the ensemble, having starred in three Mozart operas, sung the title roles in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen (twice) and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, and most recently appeared as soloist in Schubert’s Mass in E-flat.

The opportunity to revisit the Mendelssohn motet was nostalgic for Janková. “It was like coming back to my roots. I began my study at the Basel Academy of Music with Hör mein Bitten twenty years ago.” [Read more…]

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