by Timothy Robson
It was March 20, 2020, when The Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst gave their last concert as a complete ensemble before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down live performances for more than a year. The Orchestra, with guest conductor Brett Mitchell, returned triumphantly to Blossom Music Center on July 3 and 4 to celebrate Independence Day. I attended on July 4.
by Mike Telin
After a year’s absence, The Cleveland Orchestra will return to the stage of Blossom Music on Saturday, July 3 and Sunday, July 4 at 8:00 pm. Under the direction of Brett Mitchell, the concerts will also mark the first time the full orchestra has performed in front of an in-person audience since March of 2020.
“The program is titled ‘An American Celebration,’ and while I’m certain there have been countless Fourth of July concerts over the decades with the same name, for me, this program feels truly American,”Mitchell said during a telephone conversation. “We’re certainly not going to ignore the holiday, so there will be the pieces that are associated with it — the 1812 Overture and Stars and Stripes Forever — but there was a desire to have the program be reflective of times that we are living in and that we have lived through since the Orchestra and audiences were last together.”
The playlist will also include Leonard Bernstein’s “Overture” to Candide, Mary D. Watkins’ Soul of Remembrance, Florence Price’s Concerto in One Movement with pianist Michelle Cann, Adolphus Hailstork’s An American Fanfare, and Aaron Copland’s “Suite” from Appalachian Spring. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
The name Florence Price had barely come up in school. So in 2016, when pianist Michelle Cann was asked to play that composer’s Concerto in One Movement with the New York City-based orchestra The Dream Unfinished, she hesitated.
“I’d never heard of the piece, and I hardly knew her,” Cann said during a recent telephone conversation. “I thought, I’m not going to just agree to this — I need to see the music.” She remembers when the orchestra sent it to her like it was yesterday. “I sight-read through it, called my friend, and said, ‘This piece is amazing.’ I was like, wait a second — how is it so good, and no one’s ever played it, at least recently?”
After giving the New York premiere five years ago with Dream Unfinished, and debuting it with The Philadelphia Orchestra earlier this year, Cann will play Price’s Concerto in One Movement with The Cleveland Orchestra and conductor Brett Mitchell on Saturday and Sunday, July 3-4 at 8:00 pm at Blossom Music Center.
The program, “An American Celebration,” also includes works by Bernstein, Watkins, Hailstork, Copland, Tchaikovsky, and Sousa, and will open the Orchestra’s Blossom season. Tickets and more information are available here.