By Stephanie Manning| ClevelandClassical.com
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel often drew inspiration from water. Pieces like Debussy’s La Mer (“The Sea”) and Ravel’s Jeux d’eau (“Fountains” or “Water Games”) are prime examples of how to capture rippling shapes and shimmering colors in sound.
Neither of those pieces were played on The Cleveland Orchestra’s half-Debussy, half-Ravel program on Aug. 22, but they may well have been, as Mother Nature had her rainy way at Blossom Music Center.
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As any brass, woodwind, or low-string player in an orchestra may confess under mild pressure, it can feel profoundly liberating to play music that draws the spotlight away from their colleagues in the violin section, especially for extended periods. Rare though this repertoire may be — Stravinsky favored winds and percussion, and Glass wrote a whole opera without violins — pieces that foreground these parts of the classical instrumentarium do appear at the heart of the canon. Filling the stage for its 60th-Anniversary Gala concert, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society placed conductor James Feddeck at the helm for an event featuring 21 musicians — violists, cellists, bassists, and wind players.
