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The Cleveland Orchestra: a conversation with guest conductor Stéphane Denève

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by Mike Telin

Ecstasy:
1) An overwhelming feeling of great happiness or joyful excitement.
2) An emotional or religious frenzy or trance-like state, originally one involving an experience of mystic self-transcendence.

This week at Severance Hall, guest conductor Stéphane Denève will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in a musical exploration of the realm of ecstasy. The program includes Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral, James MacMillan’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (“The Mysteries of Light”) featuring Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy. Performances take place on Thursday, April 25 at 7:30 pm, Friday at 11:00 am (no MacMillan), and Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

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Cleveland Orchestra with Vinikour & Denève (March 25)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Vinikour, JorySometimes the most interesting programs bring together pieces that wouldn’t have met under normal circumstances. Sunday afternoon’s Cleveland Orchestra concert on March 25 at Severance Hall under the direction of guest conductor Stéphane Denève was a case in point. Denève paired Poulenc’s bizarrely charming Concert champêtre for harpsichord and large orchestra with Rachmaninoff’s gorgeously overwrought Second Symphony. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: a debut both for Jory Vinikour and Francis Poulenc

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by Daniel Hathaway

Vinikour, JoryWhen American harpsichordist Jory Vinikour plays Francis Poulenc’s Concert champêtre with guest conductor Stéphane Denève and The Cleveland Orchestra this weekend, the occasion will mark both Vinikour’s first appearance with the Orchestra and the Orchestra’s first performance of the Poulenc concerto, which has been around since 1928. Performances take place on Thursday, March 22 at 7:30 pm, Saturday, March 24 at 8:00 pm, and Sunday, March 25 at 2:00 pm.

“It was one of Poulenc’s favorites, and a very special work,” Vinikour said in a telephone conversation from his home in Chicago. “He wrote it with his dear friend Wanda Landowska in mind, the giant of the Baroque and harpsichord revival in the first decades of the 20th century. I think there is a bit of portrait painting of her in the Concert champêtre — the coy little references to Scarlatti and Handel, as well as some sideways glances toward Stravinsky.”

Born in Poland, Landowska emigrated to Paris around the turn of the 20th century and soon became famous for her efforts to repopularize the plucked-string keyboard instrument that had reigned supreme in Baroque music. [Read more…]

Ross Binnie talks about The Cleveland Orchestra’s fall season

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by Mike Telin

binnie-rossAs 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…]

Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom with Stéphane Denève & Paul Lewis (July 25)

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by Robert Rollin

LEWIS-PaulLast Saturday night at Blossom, The Cleveland Orchestra, under French guest conductor Stéphane Denève, presented a lively, varied, and interesting concert of Russian and German music. The evening’s highlight was Robert Schumann’s A Minor Piano Concerto, Op. 56 sensitively performed by talented British pianist Paul Lewis. Successful as a soloist with many of the world’s great orchestras, as a recitalist, and as a recording artist for the Harmonia Mundi label, Lewis tossed off the difficult passagework with the elegant grace obtainable only through major professional experience.

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