by Mike Telin
As The Cleveland Orchestra gears up to launch its fall Severance Hall season, we caught up with Ross Binnie, the Orchestra’s Chief Marketing Officer, and asked him to give his insights into the array of programs. He described them as “a blend of the curious and the familiar which will be wonderful for the audiences.”
The season kicks off on September 29 and 30 when Franz Welser-Möst leads performances of Ives’s Symphony No. 3 (“The Camp Meeting”) and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2. And organist Paul Jacobs (below) will make his Cleveland Orchestra debut as soloist in Copland’s Symphony for Organ and Orchestra. [Read more…]
Electrifying 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. 
Brahms 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.