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Cleveland Orchestra announces its 2017-2018 Centennial Season

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by Daniel Hathaway

March-17-FWM-ChildrenSome 1,200 patrons gathered at Severance Hall on Friday evening, March 17 to hear details of The Cleveland Orchestra’s 100th-anniversary season in 2017-2018. The evening began with a sumptuous reception in the lobbies accompanied by string music from members of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra playing alongside Cleveland Orchestra musicians.

Moving to the main auditorium, the crowd heard remarks from executive director André Gremillet and newly-elected Musical Arts Association president Richard K. Smucker, and reflections from Orchestra musicians Massimo La Rosa, Martha Baldwin, and Joshua Smith on their experiences. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra & Chamber Chorus: Bach’s St. John Passion at Severance (Mar. 9)

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by Daniel Hathaway

TCO-Herr-unser-HerrscherUnder the direction of Franz Welser-Möst on Thursday evening, members of The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus and an excellent team of soloists made a strong case for a not-so-historically informed approach to Bach’s sacred vocal works. The quality of Welser-Möst’s interpretation and the excellence of its execution got right to the heart of the composer’s Passion According to St. John and left a powerful emotional impression. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with Matthias Pintscher and pianist Cédric Tiberghien (Feb. 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CLO022317_077_select-for-mediaJet lag, Egypt, the long gestation of a new musical language, and the Sea — these disparate elements all had something to do with inspiring the four wildly different pieces that guest conductor Matthias Pintscher brought to Severance Hall on Thursday evening, February 23. If there were few connections to be made between those works, each of them inspired brilliant, committed performances from The Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra & Cleveland Orchestra Chorus in Haydn & Duruflé with Matthew Halls (Nov. 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

TCO&COCMaurice Duruflé’s Requiem is probably one of the best-beloved and most-performed choral works of the 20th century, but for reasons of economy, it’s most frequently heard in the composer’s reduction for organ, strings, and optional trumpets, harp and timpani — or even in the version for voices and organ alone. On Thursday evening, November 17 at Severance Hall, a stage full of Cleveland Orchestra musicians joined the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus under the baton of Matthew Halls to bring the full tonal spectrum of Duruflé’s Gregorian-fueled masterpiece to life. [Read more…]

Boulez Legacy Series at CIM concludes with CIM new Music Ensemble (Oct. 30)

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by Timothy Robson

thomas-boulez“Boulez the Advocate and Mentor,” the last of five concerts at CIM honoring the late Pierre Boulez, took place on October 30 at Mixon Hall. Appropriately, the CIM New Music Ensemble, directed by Keith Fitch, was joined by soloist Joshua Smith (CIM faculty member and Cleveland Orchestra principal flute), who performed many times under Boulez’s direction. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with Alain Altinoglu & violinist Baiba Skride (October 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

skride-babaDmitri Shostakovich permeated the first half of The Cleveland Orchestra’s concert at Severance Hall on October 14, which included his reorchestration of the placid prelude to Mussorgsky’s unfinished opera, Khovanshchina, and his dark and nervous Second Violin Concerto. But any residual gloom was dispelled after intermission by scintillating performances of Henri Dutilleux’s Métaboles and Maurice Ravel’s second Daphnis and Chloé suite, each radiant and colorful in its own way. [Read more…]

Summers@Severance: Strauss & Brahms (July 8)

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by Nicholas Jones

TCO&COCTwo Romantic meditations on death comprised the first of this year’s Cleveland Orchestra Summers @Severance programs last Friday evening — Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration and Johannes Brahms’s A German Requiem — both works of ambitious scope and seriousness, led by music director Franz Welser-Möst.

The Romantics knew how to face death. John Keats declared himself “half in love with easeful death.” “Death is the mother of beauty,” asserted Wallace Stevens, that modernist poet with a Romantic soul. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with Jane Glover, Joshua Smith & Yolanda Kondonassis (April 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

KONDONASSIS-SMITHWhile half of The Cleveland Orchestra was busy downtown providing incidental music for The Good Peaches at the Cleveland Play House on Thursday evening, April 14, the rest of the ensemble played a scintillating concert of music by Haydn and Mozart uptown at Severance Hall under guest conductor Jane Glover, featuring principal flute Joshua Smith and harpist Yolanda Kondonassis. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra this week: a chat with harpist Yolanda Kondonassis

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by Mike Telin

KONDONASSIS-SMITHMusic from the Classical era will be on tap when guest conductor Jane Glover makes a return visit to Severance Hall. On Thursday, April 14 at 7:30 pm, she will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in performances of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 6 (“Le Matin”) and Wolfgang Amadè Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp and Symphony No. 39.

Mozart’s pieces will be featured during the Orchestra’s Fridays@7 Series on April 15, and the full program will be repeated on Saturday, April 16 at 8:00 pm. On Sunday, April 17 the Orchestra will travel to Finney Chapel for a 4:00 performance on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series.     [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: Ensemble HD, “Cabaret: Between Two World Wars” (Feb. 1)

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by Christine Jay

Ensemble-HD-HiDefCan you successfully bring bar music into the concert hall? Cleveland Orchestra principal flutist Joshua Smith and Ensemble HD say, yes we can. Presented by the Rocky River Chamber Music Society on February 1 at the West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the ensemble performed their concert titled “Cabaret : Between Two World Wars.” [Read more…]

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