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The Cleveland Orchestra:
Blomstedt & Ax (Feb. 16)

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by Peter Feher

There are few music directors who know Beethoven better than Herbert Blomstedt. Now 95 years old, the Swedish-American conductor has a lifetime of serious study and performing experience to draw on, but this isn’t to say his interpretations are set in stone.

The mix of curiosity and thoroughness that’s sustained Blomstedt throughout his career was just as apparent in his program with The Cleveland Orchestra on February 16. If he’s slowed down somewhat since his last appearance here — the biggest change is that he now conducts seated at the podium — there was nonetheless a sense of coming full circle as he led Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

[Read more…]

Mahler and Chin play to The Cleveland Orchestra’s strengths (Feb. 9)

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by Stephanie Manning

On February 9, concertgoers approaching Severance Music Center likely noticed the dramatic lighting choices — the building had been lit up in a deep red. With Mahler’s Fifth Symphony on the program, it felt fitting. The composer’s intense and passionate works are popular with both musicians and audiences, and an unsurprisingly crowded house packed Mandel Concert Hall for the occasion. Not only was the music guaranteed to generate interest, but so was the conductor: young Finnish phenom Klaus Mäkelä, in his second consecutive week this season with The Cleveland Orchestra.

Audiences did not see much of Mäkelä the previous week, as illness forced him to bow out of three of four performances. But on Thursday evening, he was back and characteristically full of energy. With fluid, yet bouncy movements that make his style easily identifiable, the conductor is a fascinating watch on the podium. Frequent changes in stance and an unabashed expressiveness create the feeling that the beats are echoing through his body.

The musicians were responsive to Mäkelä’s every move. [Read more…]

Week 2: Klaus Mäkelä returns to The Cleveland Orchestra podium

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by Mike Telin

After an illness forced Klaus Mäkelä to withdraw from three of the four scheduled performances last week, the Finnish conductor will return to The Cleveland Orchestra podium on Thursday, February 9 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center.  The program will include Unsuk Chin’s SPIRA – Concerto for Orchestra and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, and it will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Last week I caught up with the friendly conductor by phone for a brief chat while he was backstage at Severance.

Mike Telin: How did you come to pair the Unsuk Chin with the Mahler?

Klaus Mäkelä: The Mahler is a tough piece to program with because it is a bipolar symphony. It’s tragic and then dramatic and has some of the most beautiful music ever written. And it ends in contrapuntal joy. It’s a symphony where everybody has an opportunity to shine. And Unsuk Chin’s piece is a beautiful concerto for orchestra. She was a student of Ligeti, and she has an extremely detailed and careful way of writing for the orchestra. In a way she reminds me of Mahler in that she is precise down to the very last detail.

Of course the piece is a showcase for the orchestra but in a virtuosic way. The strings play fast and very high and the horn has a big solo. But everything blends together. It takes a group mentality to play, which is something about The Cleveland Orchestra that is very special for me. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra
MLK Celebration: a chat 
with emcee Peter Lawson Jones

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by Mike Telin 

“When I was ten or eleven, my father was going to an MLK march. He asked me if I wanted to go and I didn’t. And that has been a regret of mine for a very long time,” Peter Lawson Jones recalled during a recent telephone conversation. “But this night will celebrate all that Dr. King did and I look forward to being part of it.”

On Sunday, January 15 at 7:00 pm at Severance Music Center, Jones will act as narrator and emcee when The Cleveland Orchestra presents its free, annual concert in honor of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. under the direction of Daniel Reith. Jones will be joined by bass and narrator Soloman Howard and the all-volunteer Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus, directed by William Henry Caldwell. Although the concert is sold out, it will be broadcast live on WCLV 90.3 and WKSU 89.7, with simultaneous streaming available at ideastream.org.

A Cleveland native, Jones is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. From 2002 through 2010, he was a member of the Board of Cuyahoga County Commissioners, and its president for three of those years. He previously served two and a half terms in the Ohio House of Representatives, where he was the ranking member of the House Finance and Appropriations Committee and second vice president of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus. He has also been the Vice Mayor and a Councilman in the City of Shaker Heights.

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Celebrate being Home for the Holidays with The Cleveland Orchestra

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by Emmy Hensley

“Not only is it nice to be back with one of the world’s greatest orchestras, but it also happens to be family because I’ve worked with them for so long,” said conductor Brett Mitchell, who will be leading The Cleveland Orchestra in their upcoming holiday concerts. “You get the best of both worlds — the best possible artistic outcomes featuring these amazing musicians, but also friends and family.”

Holiday Concerts with The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra Chorus will run from December 8 through 18 at Severance Music Center. Program highlights include selections from The Nutcracker, pieces featuring the Chorus and soprano Mikaela Bennett, audience sing-alongs, and the world premiere of “White Christmas,” arranged by Matthew Jackfert. Click here for more information and to purchase tickets.

[Read more…]

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: power and passion at El Niño (Nov. 18)

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by Stephanie Manning

In the 22 years since it was written, John Adams’ El Niño has been programmed in all kinds of creative ways. The premiere of the oratorio was accompanied by a silent film, and the 2014 Spoleto Festival brought in a crew of puppeteers. But on November 18, The Cleveland Orchestra decided to keep it simple. The straightforward concert-style presentation, conducted by Adams, let the music speak for itself — and it had plenty to say.

El Niño, a modern retelling of the birth of Jesus, isn’t an easy work to explain. Commissioned at the turn of the millennium, the oratorio tells the Biblical story from new perspectives, primarily by centering women’s voices in the narrative. It combines traditional texts with the Wakefield Mystery Plays, Haggai, and ancient and contemporary Latin American poetry. Essentially, Adams set out to write his own Messiah — but while Handel’s work is unquestionably a celebration, Adams takes a more nuanced approach, tackling big questions about the nature of miracles, pregnancy, and motherhood. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: Dvořák, Schumann, Benjamin (Oct. 27)

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by Peter Feher

From his first moments on the podium, Edward Gardner seemed entirely at home in Severance Music Center. The English conductor made his debut with The Cleveland Orchestra the other Thursday, but you wouldn’t have known it from his ease with the ensemble and the general calm of the program.

Not that the performance on October 27 lacked drama. In fact, the evening’s repertoire had plenty of fervor, from the turbulence of Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7, to the passion of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto, to a contemporary work literally inspired by a storm.

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The Cleveland Orchestra: Strauss and Widmann (Oct. 20)

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by Peter Feher

It was a good thing that preparations for last weekend’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts started seasons ago. The ambitious and challenging program wouldn’t have been possible without some serious planning, and that meant thinking well ahead of the first performance on October 20. A huge ensemble of more than 100 players, including a couple of unusual instruments, came together at Severance Music Center on Thursday — and this was an expert group.

The musicians’ skill and experience went beyond a simple mastery of the evening’s two works, Jörg Widmann’s Viola Concerto and Richard Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony. Pulling off both pieces — each a production in itself — required an instinctive grasp of the composers’ overall styles, and the players had that knowledge in spades.

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra:
Beethoven, Bloch & Al-Zand (Oct. 13)

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by Peter Feher 

The Cleveland Orchestra took on a timeless subject, but added a modern touch, last weekend at Severance Music Center. War was the theme of this mostly somber program that started with the disillusionment of a 21st-century composer and ended with the conflict and triumph of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”).

In a different ensemble’s interpretation, that trajectory could sound aggressive and even dispiriting. But with guest conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, the Orchestra committed to finding the beauty in every phrase, redeeming the rough edges of an otherwise excellent performance on Thursday, October 13.

[Read more…]

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