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Conductor Osmo Vänskä returns to Blossom Music Center

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by Mike Telin

“It’s great to come to Cleveland, because the Orchestra is always willing to do their best,” conductor Osmo Vänskä said during a recent interview. “And they expect that if someone is on the podium, that person should have the same attitude and have done their homework.”

On Saturday, July 12 at 7:00 pm, Osmo Vänskä will revisit Blossom Music Center to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in a program that includes Jean Sibelius’ En Saga and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Tickets are available online.

Speaking to him via Zoom from his home in Minneapolis, I began our conversation by asking him if there is a connection between the Sibelius and Orff. “To be honest, I don’t know if they’re connected,” Vänskä said. “There are many ways to come to a final program. Obviously in this case the concert was about Carmina Burana, and we needed another piece to start with.”

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra’s “Vox Humana” haunts with a tale of reconciliation (May 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Instructions for a classical programming chatbot: design a full-length program of music that illustrates the theme of Reconciliation, using in any combination a narrator, a full symphony orchestra, a mixed chorus, a vocal monologue and an instrumental quintet.

That’s not how Friday’s Vox Humana concert at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival came to be. But such a prompt might help explain how apparently unrelated works by Francis Poulenc, J.S. Bach, Galina Ustvolskaya, and Richard Strauss made it from Franz Welser-Möst’s fertile imagination to the Mandel Concert Hall stage.

Based on Jean Cocteau’s monodrama, Francis Poulenc’s 1958 opera La voix humaine presents the audience with one side of a telephone conversation between a jilted woman (“Elle”) and her former lover. [Read more…]

Franz Welser-Möst leads powerful performance of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa (May 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio – How can an opera be so profoundly disturbing, yet so achingly beautiful?

That was the conundrum after hearing Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa at Severance Music Center on Saturday, in a performance by Franz Welser-Möst, the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus and 11 first-rank soloists.

Welser-Möst chose the Czech composer’s 1904 opera as the centerpiece of this season’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival because of its resonance with the theme of reconciliation. That’s a complex process that “transcends mere forgiveness and forgetfulness,” festival curator Elena Dubinets writes in the elaborate program book. “It entails recollection and progression.”

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The Cleveland Orchestra Opera and Humanities Festival: “Vox Humana”

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by Mike Telin

We have all been there — sitting near someone who is having a telephone conversation. We don’t know who is on the other end of the call, but we do know the person near you is not pleased — their tone of voice and body language makes that clear.

It’s a similar one-sided telephone conversation that serves as the basis for Francis Poulenc’s forty-minute-long, one-act opera, La voix humaine. This week at Severance Music Center, French soprano Sarah Aristidou will make her Cleveland Orchestra debut in Poulenc’s mono-drama under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst.

The performances — Friday, May 23 at 7:30 pm and Saturday, May 24 at 8:00 pm — are presented as part of The Orchestra’s Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival. Tickets are available online.

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The Cleveland Orchestra: Jenůfa, an opera about reconciliation

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by Mike Telin

The 2025 edition of The Cleveland Orchestra’s Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival has adopted “Reconciliation” as its theme.

No opera treats the power of forgiveness and reconciliation better than Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa. Set in a rural Moravian village, its intense drama centers around Jenůfa, who gives birth to an illegitimate child, and her stepmother the Kostelnička (the church sacristan), who kills the baby in order to protect Jenůfa’s honor and, more importantly, her future.

On Saturday, May 17 at 7:00 pm in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Janáček’s 1904 opera based on Gabriela Preissová’s play Její pastorkyňa (Her Stepdaughter).

The cast features sopranos Latonia Moore (Jenůfa) and Nina Stemme (Kostelnička) and tenors Samuel Levine (Laca) and Miles Mykkanen (Števa). The production will be repeated on Thursday, May 22 at 7:00 pm and Sunday, May 25 at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

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Cleveland Orchestra presents world premiere of poignant, Cleveland-inspired work by Allison Loggins-Hull (May 8)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Composer Allison Loggins-Hull spent the past three years immersing herself in the city of Cleveland as The Cleveland Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow. Drawing on her interactions with residents and community organizations, her valedictory composition, Grit. Grace. Glory., is a sonic celebration of the city she recently called home.

The piece, co-commissioned by the Toronto Symphony, received its world premiere by Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra on Thursday, May 8, at Severance Music Center. The 22-minute work was the rightful centerpiece of the evening, interposed between symphonies by Mozart and Prokofiev.

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The Cleveland Orchestra: Allison Loggins-Hull’s Grit. Grace. Glory.

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by Mike Telin

When Allison Loggins-Hull was named The Cleveland Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow, she hoped that the three-year fellowship would culminate in a large work informed by the city the Orchestra calls home. And she thought the best way to do that was to get to know its people and community organizations.

“It takes time to do this kind of work in a meaningful way,” she told ClevelandClassical.com during a May 2023 interview. “During my initial visit last fall, which was the first time I was ever in Cleveland, I spent time at museums, the Fatima Family Center, Global Cleveland, Karamu House, Cleveland School for the Arts, and The Baseball Heritage Museum. All of these offered very different tastes of Cleveland in an effort to introduce myself and let people know what I was envisioning.”

On Thursday, May 8 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra will present the world premiere of Loggins-Hull’s Grit. Grace. Glory — a musical story inspired by the people and history of Cleveland. The concert also includes Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4. The program will be repeated on Friday at 11:00 am (no Prokofiev) and Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

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Conductor Kazuki Yamada’s stylish Cleveland Orchestra debut features Elgar, Mozart, and pianist Francesco Piemontesi (Apr. 24)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Edward Elgar’s first symphony was a long time coming. But once the British composer finally put pen to paper at age 51, audiences at the time simply couldn’t get enough. But tastes change, and that rapturous response in 1908 couldn’t guarantee eternal success. The piece has now settled into relative obscurity for many American orchestras.

Today, Britain is still the most likely place to hear Elgar’s Symphony No. 1 — so it made sense that The Cleveland Orchestra’s performance on April 24 should be led by the conductor of a British ensemble. City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra music director Kazuki Yamada ascended the Severance Music Center podium, making his assured and elegant Cleveland Orchestra debut.

Elgar’s symphony is unconcerned with quaint, pastoral English scenes — instead, it’s often stormy, celebratory, and in-your-face, sometimes all at once. On Thursday, Yamada confirmed his reputation for passion and expressivity as a conductor in his interpretation of the symphony.

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Soloists shine in Cleveland Orchestra’s Bach Easter Oratorio, Magnificat and more (Apr. 17)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — On Thursday, April 17, at Severance Music Center, Canadian guest conductor Bernard Labadie led The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and four splendid soloists in two of J.S. Bach’s most exultant sacred works — the dramatic Easter Oratorio, and his Magnificat. Bach’s festive Sinfonia from his Cantata 29 completed the program.

Reworked from a secular cantata for a patron’s birthday, Bach’s Easter Oratorio is a less overtly theatrical work than the composer’s Passions. Its uncomplicated story describes the moment that Mary Magdalene (mezzo-soprano Adèle Charvet), Mary of Cleophas (soprano Joélle Harvey) and the apostles Peter (tenor Andrew Haji) and John (bass-baritone Gordon Bintner) come to the tomb of Jesus and find it empty.

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The Cleveland Orchestra: fifteen minutes with tenor Andrew Haji

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by Mike Telin

The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus will appropriately mark Easter weekend with three performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s dramatic Easter Oratorio led by guest conductor Bernard Labadie on Thursday, April 17 and Friday, April 18 at 7:30 pm and Saturday, April 19 at 8 pm in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center. Tickets are available online.

Bach re-purposed a secular cantata to create his narrative of the resurrection of Jesus in 1725. Labadie will pair the Easter Oratorio on these programs with Bach’s Magnificat, a lovely (and unique for Bach) setting of the song Mary sang after learning she would bear Jesus, as reported in the Gospel of Luke.

[Read more…]

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