The Cleveland Orchestra is today hailed as one of the very best orchestras on the planet, noted for its musical excellence and for its devotion and service to the community it calls home. Under the leadership of Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra has become one of the most sought-after performing ensembles in the world, setting standards of extraordinary artistic excellence, creative programming and community engagement. The New York Times has declared it “... the best in America” for its virtuosity, elegance of sound, variety of color and chamber-like musical cohesion.
I thought this was a brilliant interview from a young conductor who paid tribute to one of the world's great orchestras. Every word out of his mouth was praise and veneration for the artistry of this orchestra and the individual musicians. And I happen to know that he was very well received in Cleveland among the players of the orchestra - who are not easily impressed! Mäkelä will be around for a long time to come, so get used to him. A word to the snobs in the comments: your invective tongues only confirm your ignorance and stupidity. You're allowed to not care for his interpretations, but have some respect.
Well not quite flawless as the video description says, but close enough! 😗👏 Whistling with that kind of precision and control is much harder than it might sound.
I attended the Cleveland Orchestra's third and final performance of Julius Eastman's single-movement Symphony No. II (on April 29, 2023), just because this seemed unmissable. The work, which is lugubrious and morose throughout, was performed with great solemnity (combined with coolly reserved emotional intensity in some spots), which was marred by a bit of audience coughing--in the quietest and most delicate parts, of course. The performance received decent applause, with two audience members in the orchestra section giving a standing ovation. Despite the rather unusual instrumentation of 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 English horns, 3 bass clarinets, 3 contrabass clarinets, 3 bassoons, 3 contrabassoons, 2 trombones, bass trombone, 3 tubas, 6 timpanists playing 24 timpani (reduced to 4 timpanists playing 16 timpani for this performance), and strings, the sounds of the individual instruments don't often emerge from a generally muddy, drone-like texture that occasionally reminded me of Morton Feldman, though nowhere as compelling. I couldn't really hear the timpani or contrabassoons much, though the oboes, English horns, bass clarinets, and contrabass clarinets emerged from the miasma at times, with the latter sometimes asked to play high in their range, producing an unearthly clarinet choir-like effect. Unlike in many of Eastman's other works, there wasn't any improvisation. It's a very sad piece for sure, and not a masterpiece by any stretch, but I'm definitely glad that the orchestra decided to do it, and that I was able to attend. The extra contrabass clarinet and contrabassoon players in the Eastman work were not credited in the program, so I'm very curious who they got to play those parts, and how they were able to procure all these extra instruments. Maybe the Cleveland Institute of Music, where many of the orchestra's members teach, was involved somehow. Wynton Marsalis's new trumpet concerto, which is apparently the longest trumpet concerto ever, at 35 minutes in length, was an ingeniously composed and distinguished work, drawing on numerous sources of inspiration--both human and non-human. Following the performance, the audience gave soloist Michael Sachs (who has been the Cleveland Orchestra's principal trumpet player since 1988) a standing ovation and four curtain calls. Wynton Marsalis himself attended the first performance (on April 27, 2023), and actually surprised the audience by coming on stage and speaking about his piece during the pre-concert lecture that night. The pre-concert talk by University of Akron composition professor Jamie Wilding, which featured him demonstrating numerous themes from the Eastman symphony on the piano from memory, was outstanding, and, according to some regular Cleveland Orchestra attendees, the best pre-concert lecture they'd ever seen. It's still unclear exactly why or how the Cleveland Orchestra, whose programming has historically been quite conservative, came to program this unconventional work by one of America's most radical composers. Maybe we'll never know. But they included several more pieces by African American composers on their May 4, 6, 18, and 19, 2023 concerts.
That's sounds like them for soviet invasion on Europe and fits perfect to soviet tanks crushing wall on border with western Germany while hundreds of paratroopers jump from il-76 planes. Literally could be world in conflict (game) theme
I only know about this celebration from watching Patti LaBelle sing her rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow on the MLK celebration 1986 on youtube. Greetings from the Philippines!
Overhyped conductor, completely out of his depth with this assignment. His Sibelius cycle was horrible. But today, media profiles matter, not competence.
I sang in the chorus for two years in the late 1980s under Robert page. It was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. I even got to sing in Carnegie Hall. I moved to DC after leaving Ohio but I miss the chorus experience so much. You should take the opportunity to audition if you can. You won’t regret it
My copy of Sibelius's 2nd symphony is the 1984 Telarc release recorded under Yoel Levi, paired with Finlandia. No matter how many times I listen to it, getting to experiencing it live still reveals nuances and passages I've never contemplated or heard before. Saturday's performance was wonderful.
I sang in the Cleveland Orchestra chorus in the late 1980s. One of the greatest experiences of my life performing some of the greatest music ever written with one of the worlds greatest orchestras
