MItsuko Uchida Archives - Page 2 of 2

Review: Cleveland Orchestra with pianists Mitsuko Uchida (April 3) and Yuja Wang (April 11)

April 22, 2014 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

Uchida Mitsuko Uchida is in the course of revisiting selected Mozart concertos after completing a whole cycle of those ravishing pieces with The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall from 2002-2007. On Thursday, April 3 she reprised No. 18 in B-flat and No. 19 in F. Between the two, the Orchestra offered Mozart’s early “Symphony” No. 23. The entire concert, including intermission, lasted about 90 minutes.

As Mozart did when he played the solo part, Uchida led the performance from the keyboard, in this case facing upstage at the lidless Steinway. Her graceful, flowing hand gestures served as manual choreography, shaping the music rather than keeping things together — not much of an issue with The Cleveland Orchestra, who are famously alert and responsive to each other.

The soloist’s bio in the program book notes that “Mitsuko Uchida is a performer who brings deep insight into the music she plays through her own search for truth and beauty.” That Apollonian approach to interpretation results in lovely, balanced, fluent and quite flawless performances, as the near-capacity audience who turned out for her latest appearance would surely agree. [Read more…]

CD Review: New live recordings: Mitsuko Uchida in Mozart with The Cleveland Orchestra & New Year’s with FWM and the Vienna Philharmonic

January 29, 2013 by Special to ClevelandClassical.com

by Daniel Hathaway

The second in Dame Mitsuko Uchida’s new cycle of Mozart concertos with The Cleveland Orchestra features live performances of Nos. 9 and 21 recorded last April 5-7 in Severance Hall (the first recording in the series, including concertos Nos. 20 and 17 won a 2011 Grammy Award for best classical performance).

In his review of one of those live performances last season for this publication, Nicholas Jones wrote, “Sensitive and confident, utterly secure in passage work, energetic and lyrical by turns, she packed these familiar concertos with beauties, pleasures and surprises … Uchida’s rapport with the orchestra shone through the performances, which she conducted from the keyboard. Her style was part of the music’s rhythmic energy — playing a phrase, shooting up from the piano bench, her hands a-flutter as if they were finding notes in space in the active passages or, in the sombre parts, turned palm upwards as if imploring the gods (or the musicians?)” [Read more…]

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Oberlin Opera stages a Cendrillon of professional quality (Nov. 10)

by Daniel Hathaway

Any regional opera company would be popping its buttons with pride to have produced such an impressive performance of Jules Massenet’s Cendrillion (Cinderella) as Oberlin Opera did in Hall Auditorium on Sunday afternoon, November 10.

Imaginative staging by Stephanie Havey, skillful pacing by conductor James Feddeck, beautiful set design and costuming by Laura Carlson-Tarantowski and Chris Flaharty, respectively, plus dramatic and — for the fairies — enchanting lighting by Jeremy K. Benjamin provided a supportive environment for splendid singing by the cast and brilliant playing by the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra.

Literally thousands of versions of the Cinderella tale exist in cultures around the globe, but many of the details of Massenet’s opera date back to Charles Perrault’s 1697 Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre, which adds what have now become essential elements to the tale: a young girl mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, who temporarily attracts the attention of a handsome prince at a royal ball and is eventually reunited with him to become a princess herself. [Read on…]

Seraph Brass dances through musical travels in Rocky River (Nov. 11)

by Stephanie Manning

Before Seraph Brass arrived in Ohio on November 11, the group’s fall touring season had taken them on the road to Missouri, Florida, New York, and even Peru. And at the Rocky River Chamber Music Society, they gave the audience a taste of the traveling life right from the first piece.

The “Prelude” from Edvard Greig’s Holberg Suite whisked listeners away to Norway, with a melody surely familiar to many. It was extra familiar to the brass quintet themselves, who launched into their opening number without sheet music. Playing memorized is part of the group’s trademark, and they smoothly alternated using music and no music throughout the evening. Either way, the wide-ranging program had those at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church spellbound.

Trumpet players Mary Elizabeth Bowden and Raquel Samayoa, horn player Layan Atieh, trombonist Lauren Casey-Clyde, and tuba player Robyn Black sounded equally comfortable in Romantic and contemporary repertoire, flipping between both with practiced ease. [Read on…]

Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Concerto Cycle performance featured pairing of rising star and mentor (Nov. 15)

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

By Daniel Hathaway

CLEVELAND, Ohio — For the third program in The Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Piano Concerto Cycle, the pairing of 20-year-old Korean pianist Yunchan Lim with his mentor Minsoo Sohn was an astute programming decision.

Well-established names on the concert circuit — Orion Weiss, Sir Stephen Hough, and Garrick Ohlsson — had already filled the empty solo spots for the composer’s Triple Concerto and solo concertos 2, 3, and 4. But the choice of the youngest pianist ever to win the Van Cliburn Competition to close out the Cleveland series packed Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center on Friday evening, November 15, with a near-capacity audience teeming with enthusiastic young people.

[Read on…]

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