by Daniel Hathaway
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cleveland Orchestra’s program on Thursday at Severance Music Center looked strange on paper, beginning as it did with the Cleveland premiere of an intellectually thorny cello concerto and ending with two of Richard Strauss’s dazzling tone poems played back-to-back.
But Til Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks and Don Juan proved to be effective palate cleansers following Alisa Weilerstein’s commanding performance of Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto. Setting its challenges for the listener aside, you could concede control over the proceedings and let conductor Alain Altinoglu be your tour guide through the mischievous and lascivious exploits of the two bad boys that Strauss immortalized in his virtuosic scores.
In his remarks before the July 28 Kent Blossom Music Festival concert, featuring members of The Cleveland Orchestra, Kent State University president Todd Diacon noted that while the past year has not been easy, “It has been made easier by the arts.” This statement was ratified by the performances that followed, where the freedom and passion in the musicians’ playing created a restorative sense of joy and optimism.
Episode 7 of The Cleveland Orchestra’s pre-recorded In Focus series is the shortest so far, clocking in at only 37 minutes. But the emotional impact of Dmitri Shostakovich’s bleak Chamber Symphony in c followed by the calm, shimmering hopefulness of Olivier Messiaen’s Le Christ, lumière du Paradis (from Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà) is out of all proportion to the length of the music.
There were unexpected changes in July 19th’s Summers@Severance concert due to the illness of previously announced conductor Pablo Heras-Casado and the substitution of Swiss conductor Thierry Fischer, who is currently music director of the Utah Symphony. This necessitated a change in program as well: Debussy’s 
The Kent Blossom Music Festival returns this weekend, marking the 51st season of Kent State University’s collaboration with The Cleveland Orchestra. From June 30 to August 4, the Festival boasts a five-concert Faculty Series and a ten-concert Young Artist Series, including its annual side-by-side performance between students and The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Bramwell Tovey. 
Kent Blossom presented its fifth and final faculty series program in Ludwig Recital Hall last Wednesday, August 1. The evening’s highlight was the gorgeous performance of Charles-Marie Widor’s 