Cleveland Orchestra settles in for August Concerts at Severance and Blossom
Photo: Roger Mastroianni
Ten concerts of varied repertoire are in store for Cleveland Orchestra audiences both at Blossom and at Severance Hall during the rest of the summer season, which extends through the weekend of September 5 & 6, thanks to the late date of Labor Day this year.
Stanislaw Skrowaczewski will revisit the site of his American debut in 1958 when he returns to conduct the Orchestra in Dmitri Shostakovich’s fifth symphony on the Summers@Severance series on Friday, August 7 at 7:00 pm. Skrowaczewski knew the composer personally, and led the Paris premiere of the fifth. He talked about his career and his history with The Cleveland Orchestra in an interview last summer.
Pianist Garrick Ohlsson will team up with guest conductor Gustavo Gimeno at Blossom on Saturday, August 8 at 8:00 pm for Beethoven’s noble fifth piano concerto, nicknamed “The Emperor,” prefaced by the Leonore Overture No. 3, the third of Beethoven’s four attempts to write an overture for his only opera, later revised and renamed Fidelio. A third noble work, Antonín Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8, will round out the evening.
Former assistant conductor James Feddeck, who has been guest conducting around the globe, will return to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Carl Maria von Weber’s Euryanthe Overture and Jan Sibelius’s fifth symphony on Saturday, August 15 at 8:00 pm at Blossom. The featured soloist is the fine Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma, who stepped in to replace Janine Jansen for Britten’s violin concerto at Severance Hall a year ago May. This time, she’ll play the much more familiar Tchaikovsky concerto.
The Orchestra will step out of its classical mode the following evening, Sunday, August 16 at 8:00 pm at Blossom, when guest conductor Michael Krejewski and vocalists Storm Large and Shem von Schroeck document “The British Invasion: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, and more.”
Fans of “early” music will find the weekend of August 21 & 22 particularly appealing. The engaging Nicholas McGegan will conduct both a Friday Summers@Severance concert on August 21 at 7:00 pm and a Saturday Blossom performance on August 22 at 8:00 pm. Principal cellist Mark Kosower will be on hand both evenings to solo in Joseph Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C, but otherwise, McGegan has crafted different programs for the two evenings. The Friday audience will enjoy the second suite from G.F. Handel’s Water Music, and Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 5, while the Blossom attendees will hear J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, Johann Christian Bach’s Sinfonia in g minor, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 31.
The pair of concerts at Blossom on Saturday, August 29 and Sunday, August 30 will offer jazz and classical music back-to-back. On Saturday at 8:00 pm, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will join forces with guest conductor William Eddins for “Swing Symphony,” an homage to jazz and pop styles of ragtime, mambo, bepop — and church music. (Marsalis and the Lincoln Center ensemble will play a concert by themselves in Severance Hall on Friday, August 28 at 8:00 pm.) Then it’s back to the classics on Sunday at 7:00 pm when guest conductor Edo de Waart and violin soloist Gil Shaham open their Blossom concert with Max Bruch’s first concerto. The bulk of the program will be given over to Gustav Mahler’s “Titan” Symphony, No. 1 in D Major.
Identical twin concerts will close the Blossom Season on Saturday and Sunday, September 5 and 6 at 8:00 pm. The subject is the popular film music of John Williams, and guest conductor Richard Kaufmann and The Cleveland Orchestra will spend both evenings visiting the music from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, E.T., Harry Potter, Superman, Jaws, Jurassic Park, and Schindler’s List.
By Daniel Hathaway. Published on ClevelandClassical.com August 3, 2015.