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Cleveland Orchestra releases details of its 104th Severance Hall Season

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Sunday, May 23, The Cleveland Orchestra announced its return to live concerts at Severance Hall in October, as “a more flexible, innovative, versatile, and empathetic institution, strengthened by the lessons of the past 14 months.”

Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, who begins his 20th season with the Orchestra this fall, commented on the planning process for the new season. “We are in a constant state of exploration, there’s an infinite number of options and combinations of how you put together a season, which is fun and exciting.”

Chief Artistic Officer Mark Williams wrote, “It’s been empowering to embrace meaningful conversations about incorporating voices especially from people of color and women. Going forward, I’m encouraged that the strides we’ve made in realizing this season will become a template for the future.” [Read more…]

Stravinsky’s Threni at Severance Hall: a conversation with Patrick Dupré Quigley

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by Daniel Hathaway

Patrick-Dupre-QuigleyThis week’s pair of Cleveland Orchestra concerts led by music director Franz Welser-Möst will be devoted to works in a variety of styles by Igor Stravinsky. One of the most challenging is Threni: Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah, a piece the composer premiered at the Venice Biennale in September 1958. Threni will be performed on Thursday, March 16 and Saturday, March 18 by The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus and the Miami-based chamber chorus Seraphic Fire, now in its fifteenth season.

We spoke by telephone last week with Seraphic Fire’s founder and artistic director Patrick Dupré Quigley, who was already in Cleveland on another assignment with the Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: conversations with English hornist Robert Walters and composer Bernard Rands

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by Mike Telin

WALTERS-RobertWhen Robert Walters performs the world premiere of Bernard Rands’ Concerto for English Horn with The Cleveland Orchestra on Friday, November 27 in Severance Hall, it will bring to fruition a composer-performer collaboration whose roots go back more than two decades.

The 8:00 pm concert, under the direction of Lionel Bringuier, will also feature Claude Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. The program will be repeated on Saturday, November 28 at 8:00 pm, and Sunday, November 29 at 3:00 pm. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Orchestra’s “Fate and Freedom Festival” begins with screening of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange

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BeethovenShostakovichby Mike Telin

The opportunity to look beyond composers’ music and into the world that shaped their lives and creative output is often available only to students enrolled in music history classes. Beginning tonight and continuing through Saturday, The Cleveland Orchestra presents Fate and Freedom: Music of Beethoven and Shostakovich. Music director Franz Welser-Möst conceived the Festival to look more closely at landmark symphonies by Beethoven and Shostakovich and provide context around their creation, while examining the ever-relevant themes of personal and societal freedom they express.

“Franz Welser-Möst is interested in bringing together unusual or disparate elements to see how they change our palette,” the orchestra’s director of artistic planning Mark Williams told us by telephone. “For example, a couple of seasons ago the orchestra played a number of works by Bruckner paired with the works of John Adams. The idea being that maybe Bruckner was the father of minimalism. Whether or not you agree with it, it is a statement.”

Fate and Freedom is a coming together of organizations and experts in their fields of study. On the musical front, Franz Welser-Möst will lead three Cleveland Orchestra concerts on three consecutive evenings, pairing Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 3, 4, and 5 with Shostakovich’s Symphonies Nos. 6, 8, and 10. [Read more…]

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