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DIARY: Monday, January 29, 2024

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: The Busch Trio (pictured) visits Rocky River Chamber Music Society from Amsterdam

•Announcements: application deadlines for the Suburban Symphony’s Young Soloists Concerto Competition and the Kent Blossom Music Festival, and Jeannette Sorrell receives Ursuline College’s Women Who Light The Way award

•R.I.P. Kathleen Mylecraine, 71

•Almanac: Frederick Delius, Havergal Brian, Luigi Nono, and Matthias Pintscher

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society hosts Amsterdam’s The Busch Trio (pianist Omri Epstein, violinist Mathieu van Bellen, and cellist Ori Epstein) in trios by Ravel, Mozart (B-flat major, K. 502), and Tchaikovsky (a minor, Op. 50). A freewill offering will be taken up. The concert will also be livestreamed.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with Smith & Altinoglu (Nov. 10)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Conductor Alain Altinoglu brought music by his fellow Frenchpeople Debussy and Ravel to his guest appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra last week, along with an intriguing new work by Matthias Pintscher featuring principal flute Joshua Smith. The concert on Saturday, November 10 played to a large audience who may not have been lured to Severance Hall by the U.S. premiere, but who gave the Pintscher work a thoughtful hearing and its soloist a big ovation. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with Pintscher & Gerstein (Nov. 1)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Only two works made up the program for Matthias Pintscher’s guest appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall on Thursday, November 1, but they were big ones. Pianist Kirill Gerstein — always worth a few surprises — brought a breezy, fresh interpretation to Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto, and Pintscher and the Orchestra labored mightily to make the music of Bartók’s infrequently performed ballet The Wooden Prince work as a symphonic poem without dancers. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: Joshua Smith rediscovers Goethe via Pintscher

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by Mike Telin

Last week, the conductor Matthias Pintscher led The Cleveland Orchestra in works by Rachmaninoff and Bartók. This week, music by the composer Matthias Pintscher will be featured when principal flute Joshua Smith gives the U.S. premiere of Pintscher’s Transir for flute and orchestra.

The program, under the direction of Alain Altinoglu, will also include a Suite drawn by the conductor from Debussy’s opera Pelléas and Mélisande, and Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole, Pavane for a Dead Princess, and Boléro.

The concerts take place on Thursday, November 8 at 7:30 pm, Friday the 9th at 11:00 am (no Pintscher), and Saturday the 10th at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Pintscher wrote the concerto for Emmanuel Pahud, principal flute of the Berlin Philharmonic, who described the piece as “the most avant-garde work I have played so far, in terms of all the special effects required and how to synchronize them with the orchestra.”

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: Kirill Gerstein talks about Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto  

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by Mike Telin

“I’ve been looking forward to this concert,” pianist Kirill Gerstein said by telephone from his home in Berlin. “This was the piece with which I met The Cleveland Orchestra for the first time at Blossom, and it’s very nice to return with this wonderful concerto and to play it in Severance Hall.”

On Thursday, November 1 at 7:30 pm, Gerstein will perform Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Matthias Pintscher. The concert also includes the complete ballet suite from Béla Bartók’s The Wooden Prince. The program will be repeated on Friday and Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Gerstein called the concerto “amazing” and said that while it is famous for its melodic beauty and technical difficulty, its structural inventiveness is often overlooked. “It is incredibly virtuosic, beautiful for the ear, and exciting. But one of the difficulties is that the soloist plays the entire time. There’s also something about needing to play much of it wrapped in what I would call aristocratic elegance, so it’s not just brutal force. While you’re doing all of these challenging things, it still needs to sound elegant.”

[Read more…]

Pintscher, Thibaudet, TCO & COC in midwinter RavelFest at Severance (Feb. 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

TCO 022218 Pintscher CloseThough he has lamentably gone on to that great podium in the sky, the spirit of Pierre Boulez hovered over Thursday evening’s all-Ravel concert by the Cleveland Orchestra in Severance Hall. Conductor Matthias Pintscher drew exacting, intelligent, glorious performances from the Orchestra and Chorus. And pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet triumphed in one of Ravel’s most demanding pieces — with one hand tied behind his back. [Read more…]

This week at Severance:
a conversation with
Jean-Yves Thibaudet

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by Mike Telin

ThibaudetOver the years Jean-Yves Thibaudet has developed what he calls a “beautiful relationship” with The Cleveland Orchestra. “There are the recordings we did in the ‘90s of all the Rachmaninoff works for piano and orchestra, and we’ve done so many concertos over the years — but never this one.”

On Thursday, February 22 at 7:30 pm at Severance Hall, the French pianist will perform Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. The all-Ravel concert, under the direction of Matthias Pintscher, will also include the Suite from Mother Goose and the complete ballet Daphnis and Chloë. The program will be repeated on Friday and Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Although Thibaudet had learned all of Ravel’s works for solo piano as well as the G-major concerto by the time he was 15, he avoided tackling the left-hand concerto. [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: U.S. premiere of Kurtág piece to honor Pierre Boulez

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by Daniel Hathaway

Gyorgy-Kurtag-2007To honor the memory of composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in the U.S. premiere of György Kurtág’s Petite musique solennelle – En hommage à Pierre Boulez 90 on Thursday and Saturday evenings, March 24 and 26 at Severance Hall. The performances will also feature Norwegian cellist Truls Mørk in the Schumann concerto, and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6.

Kurtág (pictured above in 2007), who worked with Boulez and the Ensemble InterContemporain in Paris from 1999-2001, wrote Petite musique solennelle to honor Boulez on his 90th birthday, a landmark that was also observed by The Cleveland Orchestra in a special concert in January of 2015. (Boulez died almost exactly one year later.)

In an interview for a preview of that event on ClevelandClassical.com, TCO principal keyboardist Joela Jones said, “To me it’s amazing that somebody who was so great, so brilliant, and so gifted, could also be so humble and modest. He just made you feel comfortable, like you were his equal, which of course you were not. And, if you had enough intelligence you knew that.” [Read more…]

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