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Cleveland Orchestra Brahms Weekend II: memorable work from Jacobs & Bronfman (Feb. 21)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Jacobs-Paul-closeElectrifying keyboard playing opened and closed Saturday evening’s Cleveland Orchestra concert at Severance Hall (February 21). At the outset, organist Paul Jacobs treated the large audience to an alluring taste of the organ music of Johannes Brahms, plus a thrilling performance of one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most handsomely-constructed preludes and fugues. At the end, pianist Yefim Bronfman joined Franz Welser-Möst and the Orchestra in a reading of Brahms’s first concerto so magisterial that future pianists probably need not apply. [Read more…]

Organist Paul Jacobs to open for The Cleveland Orchestra on Saturday & Sunday

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by Daniel Hathaway

JACOBS-PaulBrahms lovers (unless they particularly dote on his symphonies) will be ecstatic about what The Cleveland Orchestra is offering this weekend: two sets of concerts, each featuring the powerhouse pianist Yefim Bronfman in one of the two concertos, supplemented with other works by the celebrated nineteenth-century composer.

And in a first-ever occurrence, New York organ virtuoso Paul Jacobs will have the Severance Hall stage all to himself for the first half of the concerts on Saturday, February 21 at 8 and Sunday, February 22 at 3. Jacobs will “open” for the Orchestra with selections from the organ music of Brahms and Johann Sebastian Bach, played on Severance Hall’s 94-rank Norton Memorial Organ, built in Boston by the Ernest M. Skinner Co. in 1931, and restored and relocated by Ohio’s Schantz Organ Co. during the recent Severance Hall renovation. [Read more…]

Preview: Paul Jacobs to open Stambaugh organ series with a solo recital on September 22

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by Daniel Hathaway

JACOBS-PaulAmerican organist Paul Jacobs will be featured in the opening recital of this season’s organ series at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown. On Sunday, September 22 at 4 pm, Jacobs will offer an eclectic program on the E.M. Skinner organ, originally installed at Stambaugh in 1926 and recently and wonderfully restored to its original condition.

Jacobs deserves a place in the Guinness Book of Records for prodigious feats of organ playing, including an 18-hour marathon concert of Bach’s complete organ works in Pittsburgh in 2000 celebrating the composer’s 250th birthday, and eight cycles of the complete oeuvre of Olivier Messiaen in different American cities, each presented in a nine-hour, non-stop concert. And all of that from memory.

Jacobs is a celebrated performer but is equally dedicated to teaching. He joined the faculty at the Juilliard School in New York in 2003 in his mid-twenties, one of the youngest appointees in the history of that distinguished institution. As chairman and the sole member of the organ department, Jacobs is responsible for the nurture of the eight young organists in his studio. [Read more…]

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