by Stephanie Manning
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Thanksgiving weekend concerts by The Cleveland Orchestra often center around a big-ticket soloist or a popular piece.
This year’s program offers both, thanks to star pianist Yuja Wang and Maurice Ravel’s brilliant orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”
On Friday November 28, the snow cleared just in time for the crowds to arrive at Severance Music Center for the evening event. Led by conductor Petr Popelka, the resulting concert equally displayed the prowess of Orchestra and soloist over the course of three fascinating works.
György Ligeti’s Piano Concerto stood out in contrast to the lush textures and easy-to-follow melodies of the works that surrounded it. Premiered in 1988, its dissonant and avant-garde music might have come from another world. But both Wang and the Orchestra rose to meet the challenge of its devilishly tricky rhythms with an assured confidence.
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Sometimes the best thing a young artist can do is to turn down a job offer, no matter how tempting it might be to say yes. “Early in my career I was invited to conduct some major orchestras,” Lorenzo Viotti said during a recent telephone interview from Lisbon, Portugal, where he serves as Music Director of the Gulbenkian Orchestra. “The most important thing I did was to say no to all of them. I had many things to learn before I stood in front of such great institutions, and I wasn’t ready to deal with the pressure.”
Mitsuko Uchida is in the course of revisiting selected Mozart concertos after completing a whole cycle of those ravishing pieces with The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall from 2002-2007. On Thursday, April 3 she reprised No. 18 in B-flat and No. 19 in F. Between the two, the Orchestra offered Mozart’s early “Symphony” No. 23. The entire concert, including intermission, lasted about 90 minutes.