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Summers@Severance: Cleveland Orchestra with Cohen & Bezuidenhout (August 24)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Any concert that features a first-rate ensemble, with a respected and rising conductor at the helm and a renowned soloist as a guest, will make for a great evening’s worth of music-making. However, some events seem to invite the audience to levitate in their seats, absorbed and enchanted. Jonathan Cohen drew extraordinary sounds from The Cleveland Orchestra in one such concert last week. When pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout joined in, the assembled musicians achieved something like transcendence.

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Summers@Severance: 10 minutes with conductor Jonathan Cohen

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Québec’s chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy got its name from France’s royal court orchestra of yore. But the group’s new leader, Jonathan Cohen, is not a Gallic king — neither in reality nor in ego.

“I come from a chamber music perspective and a chamber music world,” the Manchester-born conductor said during a recent telephone conversation from rainy London. For him, music-making should be a shared endeavor with shared responsibility. “It’s not like I’m ordering people to play and they just interpret it. We do that together, and I guide the process — that’s how I like to work.”

Cohen and pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout will make their Cleveland Orchestra debuts on Friday, August 24 at 7:00 pm in the last of the season’s Summers@Severance outings — “@” Severance Hall, with air conditioning, and without crickets. The program of Handel, Haydn, and Mozart represents Cohen’s specialty: music before late Beethoven. “That kind of music is my great passion and love. And in my opinion, most of it is chamber music.”

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Got summer plans, Cleveland Orchestra? Blossom + Summers@Severance + a few extra notables

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and Clevelanders haven’t heard their orchestra live since mid-May. In the interim, The Cleveland Orchestra has been on the road, finishing off their centennial-capping Prometheus Project with performances at Vienna’s Musikverein and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. Oh, how we miss them.

We’ll get reacquainted with TCO soon, thanks to their schedule at this year’s 50th anniversary season of Blossom Music Festival, plus their fourth Summers@Severance series.

The Cleveland Orchestra marks the unofficial beginning of summer when they open their Blossom season on Saturday, July 7 at 8:00 pm. At the helm will be music director Franz Welser-Möst, leading the Orchestra in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in its orchestration by Ravel, Reznicek’s Overture to Donna Diana, and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, featuring TCO’s own soloists –– pianist Joela Jones, violinist Stephen Rose, and cellist Mark Kosower. At this concert and two others, check out the Image Magnification system, which displays live video of the performers on LED screens in the Blossom Pavilion. Fingers crossed for the weather — a firework show is planned for afterwards.

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Cleveland Orchestra announces 2018 Summers@Severance events

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by Daniel Hathaway

Summers@SeveranceThe Cleveland Orchestra will welcome three guest conductors to lead its early Friday evening Summers@Severance Concerts in July and August.

Herbert Blomstedt, who will turn 91 shortly before his July 27 appearance with the Orchestra, will lead the ensemble in Brahms’ Fourth Symphony.

Vasily Petrenko, who leads the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Oslo Philharmonic, will conduct Elgar’s In the South and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra on August 10.

And two artists will make their Severance Hall debuts on August 24 when conductor Jonathan Cohen joins pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout in Haydn’s Piano Concerto No. 11 in D. Also on the program are Handel’s Occasional Oratorio Overture and Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in g. [Read more…]

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