by Nicholas Jones
In the closing movements of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, the full brass section makes a spectacular entrance. In 1830, it must have seemed a sound that had never been heard before. Even in the jaded 21st century, it has a startling sonic complexity — at times as metallic as a locomotive’s firebox, and at others as smooth as the oiled bearings that drive the machine. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hautzinger
reprinted with permission from the Oberlin Conservatory
There was no Cleveland Orchestra when the Oberlin Conservatory of Music opened 150 years ago.
By the time the orchestra was founded in 1918 — with pivotal support from Oberlin’s John Long Severance ’85 — the conservatory was 53 years old and well into a phase of monumental growth. In 1919, the year-old orchestra performed for the first time in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel. It has returned to campus every year since — well over 200 performances and counting.
Ninety-six seasons later, as the conservatory celebrates its 150th anniversary, it honors these extensive ties to the Cleveland Orchestra with the commission of a work for English horn by composer Bernard Rands. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
When Robert Walters performs the world premiere of Bernard Rands’ Concerto for English Horn with The Cleveland Orchestra on Friday, November 27 in Severance Hall, it will bring to fruition a composer-performer collaboration whose roots go back more than two decades.
The 8:00 pm concert, under the direction of Lionel Bringuier, will also feature Claude Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. The program will be repeated on Saturday, November 28 at 8:00 pm, and Sunday, November 29 at 3:00 pm. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Orchestra unpacked its bags just long enough between its extended European concert tour and its next Miami Residency to play a three-concert set at Severance Hall from November 6 to 8. Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda was at the helm for colorful, virtuosic music by Goffredo Petrassi and Sergei Rachmaninoff, but the centerpiece of Saturday evening’s concert was a breathtaking trip through Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the imperturbable Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The three programs scheduled by The Cleveland Orchestra last weekend were each colorful in their own right, but the blueprint of works being performed was complicated enough that the program book color-coded each evening to keep patrons apprised about what they were hearing, and in what order. Come to think of it, the orchestra and stage crew probably appreciated those navigational aids as well. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
English horn and organ make for a wonderfully sensuous combination, contrasting the mellow, almost mournful sound of the oboe’s big brother with the clarity of the organ’s tone. Oberlin Conservatory faculty members James David Christie, organ, and Robert Walters, English horn, (who is also a member of The Cleveland Orchestra) played a lovely recital on Sunday, September 27, at Immaculate Conception Church, on Superior Avenue just east of E. 40th Street in Cleveland. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Friday’s Cleveland Orchestra program, the first of 2015’s three Summers@Severance concerts, opened with Olivier Messiaen’s Hymne, composed in 1933. The score was lost during the war and reconstructed from memory by the composer in 1947. The original title (Hymne au Saint-Sacrement) indicated explicitly that it was an act of reverence to the Holy Eucharist of the Catholic Mass, and it apparently represents that ritual. [Read more…]
by Jeremy Reynolds
At Severance Hall on Thursday, May 28 on a stage still covered in tarps to protect the artificial grass used in the production of Strauss’s Daphne (May 27 and 30), the Cleveland Orchestra gave a spirited performance of another of the canon’s great nature-inspired works: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral.” The second half of the program featured Richard Strauss’s Symphonia Domestica, Opus 53. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Franz Welser-Möst returned to the Severance Hall podium on Thursday, May 14 to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in a dynamic concert of music by Paul Hindemith, Jörg Widmann and Antonín Dvořák. Though the marketing department successfully advertised Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony as the main attraction (resulting in a large turnout for a Thursday evening), Christian Tetzlaff’s riveting performance of Widmann’s Violin Concerto was the most musically intriguing entry on the program, with The Orchestra’s reading of Hindemith’s Concert Music for Strings and Brass not far behind. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
A good party doesn’t sit. It moves — from room to room, topic to topic, different people getting to tell their good joke.
Now imagine a party like that, but in a palace. Think golden handrails, spacious rooms, drinks poured and legs dancing, and good music. Think Gatsby.
Or think Severance Hall on Friday night, May 15th. The Cleveland Orchestra’s last Fridays@7 concert of the season featured four musical acts in four rooms, including one last party in the gilded Grand Foyer.