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Summers@Severance: Strauss & Brahms (July 8)

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by Nicholas Jones

TCO&COCTwo Romantic meditations on death comprised the first of this year’s Cleveland Orchestra Summers @Severance programs last Friday evening — Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration and Johannes Brahms’s A German Requiem — both works of ambitious scope and seriousness, led by music director Franz Welser-Möst.

The Romantics knew how to face death. John Keats declared himself “half in love with easeful death.” “Death is the mother of beauty,” asserted Wallace Stevens, that modernist poet with a Romantic soul. [Read more…]

Oberlin’s Cooper International Competition features young pianists
in 2016

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by Mike Telin

Tony-Yike-Yang-Oberlin-Cooper-Finals-(Mastroianni)Since its inauguration in 2010, the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition has established an impressive track record for identifying young pianists with potential. That year 14 year-old American pianist George Li took home the top prize. Since then, Li has quickly established himself as a young pianist to watch on the international concert scene. In 2015, Li won 2nd prize at the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition.

In  2012, 16-year-old Italian Leonardo Colafelice won the top honors, and he too quickly cultivated an impressive career. In 2014 the first prize was awarded to 15 year-old Canadian Tony Yike Yang (left, with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra), who at the age of 16 won the fifth prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition, making him the youngest prizewinner in the history of that competition. [Read more…]

Looking forward to the summer season: a conversation with Cleveland Orchestra artistic administrator Ilya Gidalevich

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by Mike Telin

Blossom-Lawn-071115Now that summer is officially upon us, it’s time to locate the picnic basket, fill it with your favorite summer foods, and head to the Cuyahoga National Park with family and friends to enjoy a Cleveland Orchestra concert at Blossom Music Center. And, if anyone in your vehicle is under the age of 18, their seat on the lawn is free.

If you can’t make it to Blossom, the Orchestra has scheduled three early Friday evening concerts in its Summers@Severance series. Special “happy hour” drink prices will be offered one hour prior to each concert on Severance Hall’s front terrace. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early and enjoy the outdoor delights of University Circle.

“As usual the summer season is a mix of musical genres and artists,” Cleveland Orchestra artistic administrator Ilya Gidalevich said during a recent telephone conversation. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra announces
its 2016 Summer Schedule

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by Daniel Hathaway

Blossom-Lawn-by-Roger-Mastroianni-CLO81703_408On the Ides of February, when the mercury is hovering low, and your vehicle is encrusted in road salt, there’s no more pleasant pastime than thinking ahead to the lazy, hazy days of summer. The Cleveland Orchestra is thinking ahead too: details of their Blossom Festival concerts, their third season of Summers@Severance performances, their collaboration with the Cleveland International Piano Competition, and their August European Festival Tour have recently been released. Here’s what’s going to happen.

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Cleveland Orchestra Summers@Severance: music for a late summer evening (August 21)

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by Nicholas Jones

McGegan-KosowerThe summer spirit prevailed at the last Cleveland Orchestra concert in the popular Friday evening Summers@Severance series. Outside, before and after the concert, a happy crowd enjoyed drinks on the terrace overlooking the lagoon and the art museum. Inside, the concert itself seemed to radiate the crisp, clear, and warm light of these late August Ohio days. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: conductor Nicholas McGegan talks about his two concerts this weekend

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by Mike Telin

McGegan-Nicholas-kbd“It’s always a great treat for me to come to Cleveland,” conductor Nicholas McGegan said enthusiastically by telephone from San Francisco. “I love Blossom and Severance Hall, and The Cleveland Orchestra is one of the great orchestras in the world. Plus, I’m conducting repertoire that I love.” On Friday, August 21 at 7:00 pm as part of the Summers@Severance series, McGegan will lead the Orchestra in works by Haydn, Handel, and Schubert. Then on Saturday, August 22 at 8:00 pm at Blossom Music Center, he will return to the podium for a concert featuring music by J.S. Bach, Haydn, J.C. Bach, and Mozart.

One piece is common to both programs: Haydn’s C-Major Cello Concerto, and McGegan looks forward to renewing his friendship with the soloist, TCO principal cello Mark Kosower. “I’ve known him since he was a teenager, so it will all be great fun.”

The Haydn concerto is both old and new: it was presumed lost until the score was discovered by Oldřich Pulkert in the Prague National Museum in 1961. “People knew it existed, because the first couple of bars are in one of Haydn’s own catalogues,” McGegan said, “and that’s all we knew until the 1960s. It’s one of the great musical discoveries of our time, and a masterpiece at that. It’s a wonderful foil for the D-Major concerto. The C- Major is a really outgoing piece, whereas the D-Major is more intimate.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Summers@Severance with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (Aug. 7)

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by Robert Rollin

Skrowaczeswki

On August 7th, the second concert in this season’s Summers@Severance series marked guest conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski’s return to Cleveland. Drinks on Severance Hall’s lovely Front Terrace in the waning afternoon sun provided an excellent prelude to a fine musical event, of which Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 was the centerpiece. Skrowaczewski, now 91 years old, knew the composer personally, and on Friday evening he shepherded the Orchestra through a stunning performance of the work.

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Cleveland Orchestra Summers@Severance: Stanislaw Skrowaczewski returns on August 7

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by Daniel Hathaway

SkrowaczeswkiIn 1957, Polish conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski was one of the local hosts for The Cleveland Orchestra’s first European tour — an event which established the ensemble’s inter-national reputation. It was also an important moment for Skrowaczewski, whose first meeting with George Szell in Warsaw launched his own career in the United States.

On Friday, August 7 at 7:00 pm, Skrowaczewski will return to Severance Hall to conduct the Orchestra in a program that features Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. He was scheduled to lead this program at Blossom last summer but was forced to withdraw at the last moment. This preview was written for that occasion and has been revised and reposted. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra “Summers@Severance” with pianist Igor Levit (July 10)

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by Nicholas Jones

LEVIT-IgorFriday’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…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra previews its European tour repertoire at Summers @ Severance (August 29)

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by Timothy Robson

Smith & Welser-MostAs a prelude to its three-week European tour, Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra previewed some of their tour repertoire in the third of the 2014 Summers @ Severance concerts on Friday, August 29. This was no summertime “orchestra-lite” concert, but featured two demanding and arresting works by Jörg Widmann, the orchestra’s former Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow, as well as that monument of the orchestral repertoire, Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 in C minor, op. 68. Severance Hall was well filled with a very diverse audience of Cleveland Orchestra fans.

Jörg Widmann’s music brilliantly combines skillful use of orchestration with modernist compositional techniques, at the same time retaining just enough references to recognizable musical styles to make his music appealing to a wide audience. [Read more…]

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