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Cleveland Orchestra delivers powerful performances of Beethoven, Janáček (Mar. 13)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — This week’s Cleveland Orchestra programs were to have featured soprano Asmik Grigorian in Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. But when Grigorian withdrew last week for personal reasons, the focus changed to works by Beethoven while keeping intact the original theme of darkness into light.

On Thursday, March 13, music director Franz Welser-Möst wasted no time arriving at what would usually be a concert’s main event. The very first notes that rang out in Severance Music Center formed the iconic four-note motif known around the world — the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Yes, one of the most famous classical music pieces ever written opened the program instead of closing it. It’s an unconventional programming choice — but after all, Beethoven’s Fifth is a piece that needs little introduction. At least not today.

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Cleveland Orchestra marks Ravel’s 150th birthday with masterful performance (Mar. 6)

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by Peter Feher

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — When Maurice Ravel visited Northeast Ohio in 1928, not everything went according to plan. The French composer had a reputation for being far more brilliant on paper than in person. Nikolai Sokoloff, then music director of The Cleveland Orchestra, would recount afterward how Ravel came late to rehearsal, conducted his pieces clumsily, and left listeners somewhat confused.

So, it’s entirely fitting that this weekend’s concerts at Severance Music Center, which mark the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, should be entrusted to more polished hands.

Music director Franz Welser-Möst was back on the podium in Mandel Concert Hall on Thursday, March 6, presiding over a masterful performance that made a virtue of restraint. Tasteful extravagance may be more typical of Ravel’s style, but The Cleveland Orchestra has a way with refinement. And so does Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, the evening’s soloist, who gave a sensitive, at times subdued account of the composer’s Concerto in G Major.

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The Cleveland Orchestra brings the “Wild” inside (Mar. 2)

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by Kate MacKenzie

On Sunday, March 2, animal print was à la mode at Severance Music Center, as concertgoers donned masks of leopards, crocodiles, and other creatures for Dan Brown’s Wild Symphony. The program was presented as part of The Cleveland Orchestra Family Concert Series.

Conductor Daniel Reith led the ensemble, but the star of the stage was Wild Symphony’s author and composer. Although best known for his novel The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown recently made his debut in the genre of juvenile fiction. A life-long lover of classical music, Brown was inspired by works like Peter and the Wolf and The Carnival of the Animals to write his own introduction to the orchestra. A marshland walk prompted the first composition: a poem and short piece modeled after the chorus of frogs he’d heard. Over the years, the project expanded to more than twenty poems and brief orchestral works representing different animals. Wild Symphony was published as a picture book in 2020, along with an app designed to play each movement as the pages are turned.

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Welser-Möst leads lyrical, hyper-charged Beethoven “Eroica” in Cleveland (Feb. 27)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Franz Welser-Möst was greeted with a hero’s welcome at Severance Music Center on Thursday, February 27, by the large and appreciative audience — even before a note of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony had been played. He acknowledged the genuine warmth in the room, and the occasion of his return to the podium after a medical leave.

Opening the program was Shostakovich’s wintery Violin Concerto No. 2, with Leonidas Kavakos as soloist. It’s a mostly gloomy work not easily shaken from its brooding until the Finale — and even then, the raucous dancing is more crazed than jubilant.

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Thomas Adès leads Cleveland Orchestra in colorful concert of Sibelius, Saariaho, Ives & more (Feb. 20)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Thomas Adès is obsessed with sound color, as he vividly demonstrated with the assistance of the unflappable Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus (expertly prepared by Lisa Wong) in his guest appearance as curator, composer, and conductor at Severance Music Center on Thursday evening, February 20.

Works by Jan Sibelius, Kaija Saariaho, Charles Ives and Adès himself visited a vast spectrum of choral and orchestral hues that can be heard by the ear. Some of them use those colors to make poignant social commentary at the same time.

Color is represented impressionistically in the inexorable ebbing and flowing of the sea in Sibelius’ The Oceanides and Saariaho’s Otra Mar, and through musical collisions in Charles Ives’ Orchestral Set No. 2. And in the third, recently added movement of Adès’s America: the Prophecy, in ominous musical proclamations.

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Fabio Luisi leads Cleveland Orchestra in fascinating pairing of works by Colasanti and Bruckner (Feb. 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — An odd but fascinating pairing brought the U.S. premiere of Italian composer Silvia Colasanti’s Time’s Cruel Hand and the 1888 version of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 together on the same program in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center on Thursday, February 13. Fabio Luisi, music director of the Dallas Symphony, led resplendent performances of both works.

In addition to the striking contrast between their musical styles, the two pieces clock in at 20 and 65 minutes respectively — a conundrum for program planners, whose tasks would be much easier if composers would just format their orchestral works in neat, 30-minute packages.

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From “Jaws” to “Harry Potter,” Cleveland Orchestra performs John Williams’ iconic film scores (Feb. 14)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — On Valentine’s Day evening, Keith Lockhart ignited the Cleveland Orchestra and wooed the packed house at Severance Music Center in a retrospective, The Music of John Williams.

Friday evening was an indulgence — a trip down movie lane and performances by an orchestra at its most vivid, thanks to Williams’ ingenious scoring and Lockhart’s energized conducting.

Lockhart’s close link to Williams through the Boston Pops Orchestra, having succeeded him there as music director 30 years ago, showed in his innate understanding of the music and sure-handedness on the podium. Excerpts from “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones,” “E.T.” and “Harry Potter,” along with lesser-known Williams scores, made for an impressive showcase. Lockhart also engaged the audience with several amusing stories he had in his back pocket about Williams’ early days as a film composer.

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“Adès Conducts Adès” at Severance: a conversation with Sasha Cooke

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by Mike Telin

When Thomas Adès was commissioned to write a piece for Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic’s “Messages for the Millennium” program, he was asked to compose a “hopeful piece.” But what he delivered was a prophetic work about a country on the verge of crisis.

The two-part work for mezzo-soprano, orchestra, and optional chorus was premiered in New York on November 11, 1999.

On Thursday, February 20 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, Adès will lead The Cleveland Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke in the U.S. premiere of the expanded version of his America: A Prophecy. The concert will also include Jean Sibelius’ The Oceanides, Kaija Saariaho’s Oltra Mar, and Charles Ives’ Orchestral Set No. 2. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

“It’s a powerful, prophetic work that has a lot of lyricism,” two-time Grammy Award–winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke said during a telephone conversation. “But what first struck me about the piece was its beautiful poetry.”

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Cleveland Orchestra explores humanity’s evolution in Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (Feb. 7)

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by Peter Feher

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Richard Strauss must have suspected that he would always be mistaken for another composer. How else do you explain Also Sprach Zarathustra— the piece that contains his most famous minute-and-a-half of music, plus an extended homage to Johann Strauss Jr.?

The Cleveland Orchestra is playing up the Strauss connection this weekend with an extravagant concert program that borrows a bit from the style of the Waltz King. Although nothing by Johann Strauss Jr. is officially on the bill, his presence and flair are felt in Also Sprach Zarathustra and in the intoxicating sweep of Maurice Ravel’s La Valse.

The Orchestra’s performance on Friday, February 7, at Severance Music Center started strong and ended with real panache. Guest conductor Thomas Guggeis, the 31-year-old general music director of Oper Frankfurt — here making his U.S. orchestral debut — led sharp, highly stylized interpretations that would be equally at home on the continent or in Cleveland.

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The Cleveland Orchestra: A Conversation with Thomas Guggeis

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by Mike Telin

“Franz Welser-Möst was one of my first big supporters,” conductor Thomas Guggeis said during a telephone conversation. “I was his assistant at the Salzburg Festival early in my career, so it’s a real honor for me to be making my American orchestral debut with his amazing orchestra.

On Friday, February 7 at 7:30 pm in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, Guggeis will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra, Henri Dutilleux’s Tout un monde lointain…, with principal cello Mark Kosower as soloist, and Maurice Ravel’s La valse. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Born in 1993 in Dachau, Bavaria, Thomas Guggeis has served as general music director of Oper Frankfurt and artistic director of the Frankfurt Museum Concerts since the 2023–24 season. He made his debut in Frankfurt in May 2021 with Mozart’s Requiem, followed by Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Guggeis made his first North American appearance in 2023 at the Metropolitan Opera leading Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer. The same year he conducted the work for Santa Fe Opera.

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