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The Cleveland Orchestra: Stravinsky and Britten (Nov. 25)

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by Peter Feher

The Cleveland Orchestra started settling into their holiday routine over the weekend. Blockbuster pieces are always on the schedule at Severance Music Center after Thanksgiving, and the crowd-pleasing program on Friday, November 25 was no exception.

What was different — and all the more intriguing — was the package the music came in. The highlight of the evening was the complete score for Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird, a work with plenty of familiar moments but not often performed in full.

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The Cleveland Orchestra: a conversation with violinist Stefan Jackiw

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by Mike Telin

“I’m so excited about coming back to Cleveland,” violinist Stefan Jackiw said by phone from his home in New York. “I can’t wait to play the Britten with The Cleveland Orchestra in Severance Hall. It doesn’t get more luxurious than that.”

On Friday, November 25 at 7:30 pm, Jackiw will perform Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Thomas Søndergård. The concert also includes Stravinsky’s The Firebird (complete ballet). The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

I began our conversation by bringing up Jackiw’s last visit to Cleveland, in the summer of 2021 at Blossom, when he played Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2.

Mike Telin: This time you’re bringing the Britten, which is quite different from the Prokofiev. 

Stefan Jackiw: Oddly there are some similarities. They are both Spanish-influenced. Prokofiev partially wrote the 2nd while he was living in Spain. And Britten was a pacifist and had strong feelings about the violence that happened during the Spanish Civil War and the looming WWII.

MT: And Britten wrote the concerto in 1938 and 1939.

SJ: He did, and it’s a piece that is reflective of its time. It’s at times mournful and almost violently virtuosic. Sometimes hopeful, but guardedly so and sometimes whaling. And you hear its Spanish influences both in some of the rhythmic elements — there’s a moment that always reminds me of castanets — and there’s a seductive Spanish-tinged second theme in the Scherzo [Read more…]

Rafael Payare in Cleveland Orchestra debut at Blossom (July 25)

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by Timothy Robson

Venezuelan-born conductor Rafael Payare made his debut with The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center on Sunday, July 25. Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 featured Stefan Jackiw as soloist, and the program concluded with Antonín Dvořák’s evergreen “New World” Symphony. Payare is the music director of the San Diego Symphony and music director-designate of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.

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Conductor Rafael Payare to make Cleveland Orchestra debut

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by Mike Telin

It’s fascinating how many people can recall the event that planted a career bug inside of them. For Rafael Payare, that event occurred while on tour in Italy as a member of the horn section of the National Children’s Orchestra of Venezuela. “This Italian maestro, Giuseppe Sinopoli, came. He spoke no Spanish and communicated only with his energy,” Payare recalled during a recent telephone conversation. “But he changed the sound of the orchestra in the first minute of rehearsal and that really impressed me. I thought, wow, when I am old and my hair is all white, I would love to be a conductor. So that is how the conducting bug got into me.”

On Sunday, July 25 at 7:00 pm at Blossom Music Center, Rafael Payare will make his Cleveland Orchestra debut with a program that features Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with Stefan Jackiw as soloist and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”). Tickets are available online.

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Cleveland Chamber Music Society:
Junction Trio in person & online

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by Jarrett Hoffman

When you think of famous, old-school musicians, a certain invincibility comes to mind, but also a distance. So it’s refreshing when today’s virtuosos not only match or exceed the abilities of their predecessors, but also reveal without any hint of pretense that they’re human.

That was my experience last week when I met over Zoom with the New York City-based Junction Trio, made up of violinist Stefan Jackiw, cellist Jay Campbell, and pianist Conrad Tao, who individually have all been awarded Avery Fisher Career Grants, to name just one of their honors.

The basis of our conversation was their upcoming program for the Cleveland Chamber Music Society: works by Beethoven, Charles Ives, and John Zorn which they’ll share in person at Saint Paschal Baylon in Highland Heights on Tuesday, May 11 at 7:30 pm, in addition to offering a free livestream (tickets and information here).

But they also provided a glimpse into the psychological and even the vulnerable side of performing. Perhaps there’s no better place to start than with the process of “auditioning” for a chamber music group.

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