The Cleveland Orchestra’s 107th season
The Cleveland Orchestra will launch its 107th season on 19 and 22 September with the return of Franz Welser-Möst conducting Prokofiev’s ‘Classical’ Symphony, Schumann’s Violin Concerto with Frank Peter Zimmermann and Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ Symphony. It is Welser-Möst’s twenty-third season at the helm of the orchestra, and the programs are typical of the unexpected juxtapositions and contrasts that have been a feature of his tenure here. Many more such combinations lie ahead.
The rarities will include George Walker’s Symphony No.2 (conducted by Daniel Harding); Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto (with Senja Rummikainen as soloist, conducted by the composer); Tan Dun’s Water Concerto (with Cleveland Orchestra percussionist Marc Damoulakis) and Concerto for Orchestra (both conducted by the composer); the tenor/baritone version of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (with Limmie Pulliam and Iurii Samoilov, conducted by Welser-Möst); Duke Ellington’s New World a-Comin’ (conducted by David Robertson); the Cleveland premiere of Guillaume Connesson’s John Coltrane-inspired A Kind of Trane (with Steven Banks as soloist, conducted by Stéphane Denève); Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra (conducted by Elim Chan); Henri Dutilleux’s cello concerto, Tout un monde lointain…, with Cleveland Orchestra principal cello Mark Kosower, conducted by Thomas Guggeis); Kaija Saariaho’s Oltra mar (conducted by Thomas Adès); and Haydn’s Symphony No.52 (conducted by Welser-Möst).
World premieres include Urworte by Bernd Richard Deutsch, the Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow from 2018 to 2021, and a piece by the orchestra’s current Lewis Fellow, Allison Loggins-Hull (both conducted by Welser-Möst). US premieres include Silvia Colasanti’s Time’s Cruel Hand (with countertenor Tim Mead, conducted by Fabio Luisi), and a newly-expanded version of America: A Prophecy by Thomas Adès (featuring soprano Kelley O’Connor and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, led by the composer).
The 2025 Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival will feature Janáček’s Jenůfa (starring Latonia Moore and Nina Stemme) and Poulenc’s La voix humaine. Selections from J. S. Bach’s ‘Komm, Jesu, komm’, Ustvolskaya’s Symphony No.5 (‘Amen’) and the symphonic fantasy from Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten are also scheduled.
Among the repertory favorites are Stravinsky’s Petrushka (Welser-Möst); Schumann’s Symphony No.2 (Harding); Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin and Sibelius’s Symphony No.5 (Salonen); Mahler’s Symphony No.3 (Klaus Mäkelä); Copland’s suites from Appalachian Spring and The Tender Land (Robertson); Shostakovich’s Symphony No.10 (Pablo Heras-Casado); and Milhaud’s La Création du Monde, Poulenc’s suite from Les Biches and Gershwin’s An American in Paris (Denève). The presentations include Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra and Ravel’s La Valse (Guggeis); Bruckner’s Symphony No.7 (Luisi); Ives’s Orchestral Set No.2 (Adès); Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony (Alan Gilbert); Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4 (Welser-Möst); Elgar’s Symphony No.1 (Kazuki Yamada); and Mozart’s Symphony No.40 and Prokofiev’s Symphonies No.3 & 4 (Welser-Möst).
Popular guest soloists will include Yefim Bronfman, Marc-André Hamelin, Emanuel Ax, Francisco Piemontesi, Hilary Hahn, Leonidas Kavakos, Seong Jin-Cho and Asmik Grigorian. A Beethoven piano concerto cycle from 6 to 17 November will feature Igor Levit and includes Augustin Hadelich and Julia Hagen in the Triple Concerto for piano, violin and cello.
The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus will be featured in Bach’s Easter Oratorio and Magnificat (both conducted by Bernard Labadie), and in Mahler’s Third, Adès’s America: A Prophecy and the Janáček opera.
The Severance in Recital series returns on 24 September with Pavel Kolesnikov playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations and continues on 4 December with Kirill Gerstein in a program that includes Schumann’s Carnaval and Liszt’s Sonata in B minor. It resumes on 23 February with Vikingur Ólafsson and Yuja Wang playing Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances and John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction, with additional pieces by Ligeti, Brubeck, Nancarrow, and Pärt. On 27 March, Leif Ove Andsnes arrives with a program of Chopin’s Preludes, Grieg’s Sonata and a rare chance to hear the ‘Sonata Etere’, the only surviving piano sonata by the brilliant Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt, an underrated genius who lost most of his life’s work in a disastrous 1970 fire. The series will close on 7 May with Evgeny Kissin playing a program of Beethoven, Chopin and Shostakovich.
Special events include the return of pianist Yuja Wang to play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 in March 2025, the Canadian Brass in a holiday program (23 December) and Itzhak Perlman’s klezmer program, ‘In the Fiddler’s House’ (8 April). Live movie soundtrack concerts will include The Nightmare Before Christmas (1 November), The Muppet Christmas Carol (18/19 December) and Black Panther (28/29 March).
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Mark Sebastian Jordan