by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and pianist Mitsuko Uchida were featured in Thursday evening’s concert at Severance Hall on May 16, the chorus in Schubert’s great Mass in E-flat, the pianist in Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto — works that came at the very end of each composer’s time on earth. At some 50 minutes in duration, Schubert’s setting is as difficult to imagine performing in a church context as Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Even the most imaginative ecclesiastical choreographers would be hard-pressed to match such extended music with liturgical actions. (Is there enough incense in Vienna?) [Read more…]
The American political landscape has broadened over the past few years to include socialist and fascist ideas previously unthinkable in the public sphere. Programming works from the 1930s, another time of torrent, The Cleveland Orchestra and guest conductor Adrien Perruchon gave their August 25 concert at Blossom Music Center an unusual political saliency. The performance of Orff’s 
Depending on your point of view, the three Star Wars concerts at the tail end of August and into September either mark a thrilling end of The Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom season, or serve as fun, galactic encores to the earthly drama unfolding this weekend.
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“Daphne” means “Laurel” in Greek, and Ovid’s tale in Metamorphoses of how a river nymph came to be transmogrified into a sacred tree has all the elements that an opera composer could wish for: a sylvan setting, gods meddling in human affairs, passion versus purity, jealousy that leads to murder, a drunken orgy, and an ennobling ending. Jacopo Peri took on the story in 1597 (one of several operas he wrote, now mostly lost), as did Marco da Gagliano (1608), Heinrich Schütz (1627, his only opera, entirely lost), Alessandro Scarlatti (1700) and, most recently, Richard Strauss (1938).