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announced that both its music director and the featured soloist for its forthcoming Beethoven Concerto Cycle have withdrawn from the seven-concert series at Severance Music Center, scheduled for November 6-17.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

DIARY: Wednesday, January 5, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

ABRAHAMSEN & LEVIT:

Based on The Cleveland Orchestra’s program this week — Hans Abrahamsen’s Vers le silence followed by Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto in the hands of Igor Levit — there are two articles from the past couple of years worth revisiting.

First, a profile of Levit (above) by Alex Ross in The New Yorker from May 2020, which covers his series of house concerts from early in the pandemic (the way they began is not how you would expect), his voracious and omnivorous taste in music, his cultural status in German-speaking countries, his leftist politics, the death threats he has received from the far right (and the concerts at which those threats were purportedly to occur), and more. [Read more…]

A guide to staying home and streaming videos of concerts

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Live streams, re-broadcasts, digital archives, and YouTube channels — here are some videos of performances to keep you occupied during social distancing.

Beginning locally, some performances are still taking place via live stream, without an audience. On Thursday, March 19 at 4:30 pm, Oberlin Conservatory will stream a faculty and guest concert from Stull Recital Hall. Flutist Alexa Still, cellist Mihai Tetel, and pianist Evan Hines come together in Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Assobio a Játo (“Jet Whistle”) and Valerie Coleman’s 2019 Amazonia.

Piano Cleveland, the presenting organization of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, has announced a new weekly series called The Quarantine Concerts, to be streamed every Thursday at 7:30 pm from Steinway Piano Gallery Cleveland. The first concert, on March 19, will feature pianist Yaron Kohlberg as well as the piano duo of Natsumi Shibagaki and Irwin Shung. Online audience members have the opportunity to offer their support directly to these artists by donating to Piano Cleveland’s Musicians’ Fund.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra “Summers@Severance” with pianist Igor Levit (July 10)

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by Nicholas Jones

LEVIT-IgorFriday’s Cleveland Orchestra program, the first of 2015’s three Summers@Severance concerts, opened with Olivier Messiaen’s Hymne, composed in 1933. The score was lost during the war and reconstructed from memory by the composer in 1947. The original title (Hymne au Saint-Sacrement) indicated explicitly that it was an act of reverence to the Holy Eucharist of the Catholic Mass, and it apparently represents that ritual. [Read more…]

Summers@Severance to feature three (no, four!) Friday concerts in 2015

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by Daniel Hathaway

TCOS@STerraceExcept for special events like Oberlin’s Cooper Competitions, Severance Hall usually takes a summer break while The Cleveland Orchestra is off performing at Blossom Music Center. Last year, in response to burgeoning summer activity among other University Circle institutions, the Orchestra’s administration planned three Friday evening performances on its home turf. As chief marketing officer Ross Binnie said in an interview for this publication last July, “The change is so dramatic and the area is really buzzing with life now on a year-round basis. So it seemed an oversight not to have our doors opened as well to anyone wants to come to hear our concerts indoors in a relaxed atmosphere in the summer.”

This summer, Severance Hall will again resound with three concerts by The Cleveland Orchestra — on July 10, August 7, and August 21 at 7:00 pm — plus a bonus performance on August 28 at 8:00 pm by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Music director Franz Welser-Möst will lead the opening performance, which revisits two works the Orchestra played during that busy week in May when the League of American Orchestras was visiting Cleveland for its annual conference. On July 10, Olivier Messiaen’s Hymne and Richard Strauss’s Symphonia domestica will share the program with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, with Igor Levit as the featured soloist. [Read more…]

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