The Cleveland Orchestra March 15-18 and 22-25 Concerts

THE

CLEVEL AND ORC HE STR A

2O1 7-18 CENTENNIAL SEASON

FRANZ WELSER-MÖST

Week 17 March 15, 16, 17, 18

Barber Cello Concerto and Dvořák Symphony page 25

Week 18 March 22, 23, 24, 25

Rachmaninoff ’s Second Symphony page 55

Perspectives: March is “Music in Our Schools” Month page 7

SEVERANCE HALL

SPRING

We help keep the orchestra feeling sharp.

As the official health insurer of The Cleveland Orchestra, Medical Mutual is honored to provide continuous support and applause to one of the world’s most respected musical ensembles.

Ohio’s Health Insurance Choice Since 1934 © 2016 Medical Mutual of Ohio

MedMutual.com/Arts

Music colors their world.

That’s why we’re proud supporters of The Cleveland Orchestra’s music education programs for children, making possible the rewards and benefits of music in their lives.

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2O1 7-18 CENTENNIAL SEASON

TA B L E

OF

CONTENTS

THIS BOOK THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

About the Orchestra

PAGE

Weeks 17 AND 18 Perspectives from the Executive Director March is “Music in Our Schools” Month . . . . . . . 7 Musical Arts Association . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 From the Start: The Cleveland Orchestra . . . . . . 11 By the Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Roster of Musicians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Concert Previews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Severance Hall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Patron Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Upcoming Concerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

COVER: PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROGER MASTROIANNI (RIGHT) AND THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA ARCHIVES (LEFT):

Formal portrait of the Cleveland Orchestra onstage in its new home, Severance Hall, 1931.

Copyright © 2018 by The Cleveland Orchestra and the Musical Arts Association Eric Sellen, Program Book Editor E-MAIL: esellen@clevelandorchestra.com Program books for Cleveland Orchestra concerts are produced by The Cleveland Orchestra and are distributed free to attending audience members.

Program book advertising is sold through Live Publishing Company at 216-721-1800

17 DVOŘÁK’S EIGHTH SYMPHONY Concert: March 15, 16, 17, 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Introducing the Concerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 WEEK

DVOŘÁK

The Watersprite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 BARBER

Cello Concerto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 DVOŘÁK

Symphony No. 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Guest Conductor: Alan Gilbert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Guest Soloist: Alisa Weilerstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 NEWS

Cleveland Orchestra News . . . . . . . . 45

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ROMANTIC RACHMANINOFF Program: March 22, 23, 24, 25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Introducing the Concerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 WEEK

The Cleveland Orchestra is grateful to the following organizations for their ongoing generous support of The Cleveland Orchestra: National Endowment for the Arts, the State of Ohio and Ohio Arts Council, and to the residents of Cuyahoga County through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

The Cleveland Orchestra is proud of its long-term partnership with Kent State University, made possible in part through generous funding from the State of Ohio.

The Cleveland Orchestra is proud to have its home, Severance Hall, located on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, with whom it has a long history of collaboration and partnership.

POULENC

This program is printed on paper that includes 50% recycled content.

Pastoral Concerto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 RACHMANINOFF

Symphony No. 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

50%

Guest Conductor: Stéphane Denève . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Guest Soloist: Jory Vinokour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

These books are printed with EcoSmart certified inks, containing twice the vegetable-based material and one-tenth the petroleum oil content of standard inks, and producing 10% of the volatile organic compounds.

Festival April 21-29 The Ecstasy of Tristan and Isolde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Support Second Century Sponsors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Annual Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72-81

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All unused books are recycled as part of the Orchestra’s regular business recycling program.

Table of Contents

The Cleveland Orchestra

10 0

RE ASON S

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CE LE BR ATE

No. 98 When it debuted, the Orchestra consisted of 54 musicians and conductor Nikolai Sokoloff.

Today, the Orchestra has more than 100 musicians.

BakerHostetler is honored to share with The Cleveland Orchestra a 100-year tradition of excellence in service to our community.

We are proud of our decades-long support of this world-class orchestra, and to celebrate its legacy we have gathered 100 facts about its illustrious history.

Visit bakerlaw.com/100reasons to read them all.

bakerlaw.com

“It’s wonderful living next to such a great university.”

—Kerstin and Leonard Trawick, Judson residents since 2013

Kerstin Trawick thinks it’s never too late to learn something new. Living at Judson Park, she continues to pursue lifelong learning opportunities at Case Western Reserve University.

Judson and Case Western Reserve have established an exciting partnership that offers Judson residents complete access to University events, programs and facilities, like the Kelvin Smith Library and the new state-of-the-art Tinkham Veale University Center.

For CWRU alumni considering a move to Judson, there is an attractive discount towards an independent living entry fee and complimentary relocation package.

Learn more about all the benefits included in the partnership between Judson and Case Western Reserve University. Call (216) 446-1579 today.

Visit www.judsonsmartliving.org/cwru for information about this exciting partnership

Perspectives from the Executive Director March 2018 Since its founding a hundred years ago, one of The Cleveland Orchestra’s core missions has been to inspire and educate new generations across Northeast Ohio. As we begin our Second Century, our unwavering commitment to this fundamental promise remains stronger than ever.

March is “Music in Our Schools” month, celebrated across the country to raise awareness surrounding the importance of music and arts education in schools. On Tuesday, March 6, I was privileged to travel along with nearly 200 young musicians from 37 communities across Northeast Ohio, as the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus gave a special — and superbly polished — performance at the Ohio Statehouse for legislators and government policy-makers.

We believe that no child’s education should be considered complete without music and the arts. From studies and personal experience, we know that music is an essential component of a well-rounded education for all children. Exposure to and learning about the arts helps children, students, parents, and adults. Here’s how . . .

Learning in and through the arts improves academic achievement, raises graduation rates, increases self-esteem, and helps develop many of the traits and skills that are essential to succeeding in the 21st century — including creativity, effective communication, problem solving, collaboration, and innovative thinking; Students who participate in music and the arts outperform their peers on virtually every measure, according to decades of research, with students from lower socio-economic backgrounds reaping the greatest benefits; Arts education feeds and supports Ohio’s industries, arts and cultural organizations, and the overall quality of life throughout our region; Music and the arts provide a positive lens through which to view, interact and understand the world; especially in these turbulent times, music and the arts feed our souls and help strengthen a sense of community.

Each year, thousands of area students and their teachers attend weekday Education Concerts here at Severance Hall, in addition to a dedicated series of in-school programs focused on fostering learning of music and through music. In its first century, with the support of many generous corporations, foundations, and individuals, The Cleveland Orchestra has introduced over 4 million young people to live classical music, and thousands more have participated in instrumental and vocal music-making under our auspices. An important goal for the Orchestra’s Second Century is to enable even more children to experience music firsthand, especially those with the least access — because all children deserve the benefits of an art-rich education, one that contributes to success in school, work, and life.

As audience members and patrons of The Cleveland Orchestra who appreciate the value of music in your own lives, I hope that you can all be advocates for music’s continuing role — in the schools, in our community, for all, each and every day. Your support and advocacy can make a world of difference today, and for future generations.

Severance Hall 2017-18

André Gremillet

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MUSICAL ARTS ASSOCIATION

as of January 2018

operating The Cleveland Orchestra, Severance Hall, and Blossom Music Festival O F F I C E R S A ND E XEC UT I VE C O MMIT T E E Richard K. Smucker, President Dennis W. LaBarre, Chairman Richard J. Bogomolny, Chairman Emeritus Alexander M. Cutler Hiroyuki Fujita David J. Hooker Michael J. Horvitz Douglas A. Kern

Norma Lerner, Honorary Chair Hewitt B. Shaw, Secretary Beth E. Mooney, Treasurer

Virginia M. Lindseth Nancy W. McCann Larry Pollock Alfred M. Rankin, Jr. Audrey Gilbert Ratner

Barbara S. Robinson Jeffery J. Weaver Meredith Smith Weil Paul E. Westlake Jr.

R E S I D E NT TR U S TE ES Richard J. Bogomolny Yuval Brisker Jeanette Grasselli Brown Helen Rankin Butler Irad Carmi Paul G. Clark Robert D. Conrad Matthew V. Crawford Alexander M. Cutler Hiroyuki Fujita Robert K. Gudbranson Iris Harvie Jeffrey A. Healy Stephen H. Hoffman David J. Hooker Michael J. Horvitz Marguerite B. Humphrey Betsy Juliano Jean C. Kalberer Nancy F. Keithley

Christopher M. Kelly Douglas A. Kern John D. Koch Dennis W. LaBarre Norma Lerner Virginia M. Lindseth Milton S. Maltz Nancy W. McCann Stephen McHale Thomas F. McKee Loretta J. Mester Beth E. Mooney John C. Morley Meg Fulton Mueller Katherine T. O’Neill Rich Paul Larry Pollock Alfred M. Rankin, Jr. Clara T. Rankin Audrey Gilbert Ratner

Charles A. Ratner Zoya Reyzis Barbara S. Robinson Steven M. Ross Luci Schey Spring Hewitt B. Shaw Richard K. Smucker James C. Spira R. Thomas Stanton Russell Trusso Daniel P. Walsh Thomas A. Waltermire Geraldine B. Warner Jeffery J. Weaver Meredith Smith Weil Jeffrey M. Weiss Norman E. Wells Paul E. Westlake Jr. David A. Wolfort

N O N- R E S I D E NT TR U S T E E S Virginia Nord Barbato (New York) Wolfgang C. Berndt (Austria)

Laurel Blossom (California) Richard C. Gridley (South Carolina)

Herbert Kloiber (Germany) Paul Rose (Mexico)

T RU S TE E S E X- O F F I C I O Faye A. Heston, President, Volunteer Council of The Cleveland Orchestra Patricia Sommer, President, Friends of The Cleveland Orchestra Elizabeth McCormick, President, Blossom Friends of The Cleveland Orchestra T RU S TE E S E M E R I TI George N. Aronoff Dr. Ronald H. Bell David P. Hunt S. Lee Kohrman Charlotte R. Kramer Donald W. Morrison Gary A. Oatey Raymond T. Sawyer PA S T PR E S I D E NT S D. Z. Norton 1915-21 John L. Severance 1921-36 Dudley S. Blossom 1936-38 Thomas L. Sidlo 1939-53

Carolyn Dessin, Chair, Cleveland Orchestra Chorus Operating Committee Beverly J. Warren, President, Kent State University Barbara R. Snyder, President, Case Western Reserve University

H O N O RARY T RUS T E E S FOR LIFE Robert P. Madison Gay Cull Addicott Robert F. Meyerson Charles P. Bolton The Honorable John D. Ong Allen H. Ford James S. Reid, Jr. Robert W. Gillespie Dorothy Humel Hovorka* Alex Machaskee * deceased

Percy W. Brown 1953-55 Frank E. Taplin, Jr. 1955-57 Frank E. Joseph 1957-68 Alfred M. Rankin 1968-83

Ward Smith 1983-95 Richard J. Bogomolny 1995-2002, 2008-09 James D. Ireland III 2002-08 Dennis W. LaBarre 2009-17

THE CLEVEL AND ORCHESTR A Franz Welser-Möst, Music Director

Severance Hall 2017-18

André Gremillet, Executive Director

Musical Arts Association

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Together, we’re greater.

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We’ve seen how far we’ve come. We envision how far we will go. And we know that UNITED is the only way we can continue to achieve the Greater Cleveland we all believe in. Please join us. Together, we’re greater.

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10

The Cleveland Orchestra

CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA THE

December 1919, Grays Armory

From the Start

A Mission for Greatness in Community, Education, & Music

by E R I C S E L L E N

A

2O1 7-18 CENTENNIAL SEASON

cclaimed for decades among the world’s top symphonic ensembles, The Cleveland Orchestra celebrates its 1OOth year during the 2017-18 season.

Such fame and acclaim did not come without a plan. From the very beginning, the private citizens who created this public institution fully intended to foster a great musical ensemble that would carry the exceptional can-do spirit of the city of Cleveland far and wide. Generations have carried through on the hard work required to forge and sustain the Orchestra’s mission to share extraordinary musical experiences, to foster a love of music in students of all ages, and to proudly carry the name of the city it represents.

The Early Decades: Creation, Growth, and the Construction of Severance Hall At the time the ensemble was created, in 1918, Cleveland was a rising industrial metropolis heavily involved in the steel industry and rivalling Detroit in car manufacturing. Rich magnates put the money together for the Orchestra’s early seasons, including John L. Severance, an acquaintance of John D. Rockefeller.

Unusually for the era, a woman, Adella Prentiss Hughes, was the

Severance Hall 2017-18

About the Orchestra

11

guiding light behind the efforts to create a hometown band — and she worked tirelessly and with great political finesse to launch it on a trajectory toward being “as good as any orchestra in America.”

Nikolai Sokoloff, the Orchestra’s first music director (1918-33), is often overlooked in light of his better-known suc-

12

cessors. He was, however, certainly good enough to pull the group together and guide them forward for more than a decade. Those years saw the start of many education programs that continue today — the Orchestra has introduced more than 4 million young people to classical music across its first century — as well as extensive touring across the United States and to Cuba, and its first concerts at New York’s famed Carnegie Hall.

Perhaps the biggest push in the early years came from John L. Severance when he donated money toward the ensemble’s permanent home concert hall, named to honor both Severance and his wife when it opened in 1931. Severance Hall was among the very first such buildings designed with radio broadcasting capability in its original schematics and quickly gave the musical ensemble a new sense of permanence, style, and purpose.

Artur Rodzinski came next as music director (1933-43), injecting a new level of energy into the Orchestra’s music making.

A gifted if mercurial leader, who may (or may not) have had a pistol strapped to him onstage when he conducted, Rodzinski had big ambitions and started out strong. For four seasons in the mid-1930s, the Orchestra’s season featured fully-staged opera productions at Severance Hall, with some of the day’s most-renowned stars, including Lotte Lehmann and Friedrich Schorr.

However, the cost of presenting four or five operas each year, in the midst of the Depression, eventually forced their discontinuation. Rodzinski moved forward nevertheless, with recordings alongside new and rediscovered works. Finally, he left CleveThe Cleveland Orchestra

land to pursue his own career in the bigger cities of New York and, later, Chicago.

For Erich Leinsdorf, the next music director (1943-46), timing was everything — and World War II largely precluded him from making much impact in Cleveland.

Many of the ensemble’s musicians were on leave for military duty, and Leinsdorf himself was away part of the time for military service. Evenso, he made some solid recordings, led a variety of radio broadcasts, and re-affirmed his own bona fides for the high-powered international career he enjoyed in the ensuing decades.

The Szell Era: Rise to International Fame George Szell, music director from 1946 until his death in 1970, took a credibly good orchestra and made it great. It’s not that he put The Cleveland Orchestra on the map, for it had been touring around the U.S. for years. It was more that he took the stage and insisted that Cleveland could be — in real fact, would become — as good

as any orchestra anywhere. His legendary standards focused 100 musicians toward a kind of peerless perfection that dazzled many ears. Just as a great restaurant grows its reputation through delivering consistent excellence, Szell was concerned with repeatability. Day in and day out, critics and audiences around the world could more and more count on The Cleveland Orchestra to deliver a great performance, everytime, anywhere. That predictability, coupled with the rise of audiophile home listening equipment (and stereo sound) turned Cleveland into a powerhouse in the recording studio, creating an outstanding catalog across the standard repertoire, many selections from which still hold their own as much as half a century later.

The Orchestra’s ambitions also grew along with Szell’s tenure, touring internationally to amaze Europeans unaccustomed to such constant perfection in live performance. A ten-week tour in 1965 included a month in the Soviet Union, which became legendary among Cleveland’s musicians,

Education has long been a fundamental part of The Cleveland Orchestra’s programs each year, including teaching and coaching future musicians — such as these young students in 1929.

Severance Hall 2017-18

About the Orchestra

13

2O1 7-18

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

CENTENNIAL SEASON

Second Century Celebration We are deeply grateful to the visionary philanthropy of the sponsors listed here who have given generously toward The Cleveland Orchestra’s 1OOth season in support of bringing to life a bold vision for an extraordinary Second Century — to inspire and transform lives through the power of music.

Presenting Sponsors

Leadership Sponsors

Sponsors

Ruth McCormick Tankersley Charitable Trust

Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP National Endowment for the Arts The Sherwin-Williams Company

Westfield Insurance KPMG LLP PwC

Global Media Sponsor

Series and Concert Sponsors We also extend thanks to our ongoing concert and series sponsors, who make each season of concerts possible: American Greetings Corporation BakerHostetler Buyers Products Company Dollar Bank Foundation Eaton Ernst & Young LLP Forest City Frantz Ward LLP The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company Great Lakes Brewing Company Hahn Loeser & Parks LLP Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc. NACCO Industries, Inc. Jones Day KeyBank The Lincoln Electric Foundation Litigation Management, Inc. The Lubrizol Corporation Materion Corporation Medical Mutual MTD Products, Inc. North Coast Container Corp.

Ohio Savings Bank Olympic Steel, Inc. Parker Hannifin Foundation PNC Bank Quality Electrodynamics (QED) RPM International Inc. The J. M. Smucker Company Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP The Sherwin-Williams Company Thompson Hine LLP Tucker Ellis

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Second Century Sponsors

The Cleveland Orchestra

staff, and board members for the Orchestra’s unflagging ability to put on a great performance for wildly enthusiastic audiences — even with circumstances of lessthan-optimal hotels, transportation, and backstage facilities.

Despite his reputation, the steel-eyed taskmaster Szell was not entirely without emotion and understanding of those around him or of humanity as a collective society. Stories abound of small gestures of sympathy and understanding at fateful moments in the lives of longtime Orchestra musicians. And, having escaped in the 1930s from a Europe-turned-afoul, he was well-tuned to world politics and changing times — and to the need for public statements in times of crisis. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, he led the Orchestra in a moving performance of the Funeral March from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, making a statement of solidarity and caring with the ongoing struggle for human justice.

Planning and foresight by the Orchestra’s leadership also brought about increased performance opportunities. In 1968, the opening of the Orchestra’s parklike countryside summer home, Blossom Music Center, ensured the musicians of a year-round employment contract, further bonding them with their hometown audiences (who also lined up by the thousands at Blossom for rock-n-roll concerts by the era’s other big-name musical legends).

Forging Ahead: Boulez and Maazel Upon Szell’s death, Pierre Boulez was appointed to an interim position as musical advisor for two seasons (1970-72). Boulez Severance Hall 2017-18

made his professional American debut with the Cleveland ensemble in 1965. His relationship as a friend and influence on the podium in Cleveland eventually extended to nearly half a century. He brought daring programming of new music along with new ideas to clear the accumulated earwax from old ways of listening to classics. His astute musical judgement and his extraordinary laser-like precision on the podium eventually won Cleveland five Grammy Awards. By example and with keen intellect and approach, he effortlessly encouraged the musicians across a widening spectrum of the repertoire.

Lorin Maazel, the next music director (1972-82), stirred things up a bit for The Cleveland Orchestra. His high-energy leadership and fascinating programming, along with a compelling (if at times headstrong) conducting style also dared the musicians to make music in new ways. International touring continued, including the Cleveland’s first trips to South America and to Australia and New Zealand — with the Orchestra’s global reach becoming a true reality beyond its well-deserved reputation.

The ensemble’s recordings also continued, with Maazel leading large swaths of the repertoire and helping the Orchestra pioneer digital recording.

A New Golden Era: Dohnányi and a Restored Severance Hall Christoph von Dohnányi, the sixth music director (1982-2002), brought artistic leadership for a second “Golden Age,” as well as, finally, some critical distinction beyond being “the Orchestra that Szell built.”

Dohnányi focused on both precision and

About the Orchestra

15

warmth of sound, while presenting intriguing programming of standard works mixed together with lesser-known repertoire. Touring became an annual part of the Orchestra’s calendar, including regular residencies in Salzburg, performances throughout Europe, and first performances in China.

These years also coincided with the final era of growth in commercial recording. The Cleveland Orchestra laid claim to being the “most-recorded orchestra in America” for nearly a decade, turning out album after album annually to wide acclaim and sales. In addition, Dohnányi revived the Orchestra’s operatic traditions, though mostly with in-concert presentations, and devoted his work to further polish and amalgamate the musicians’ gifted artistry and ensemblework.

One of the greatest long-term achievements of Dohnányi’s tenure was the renovation and expansion of Severance Hall, which restored what many have called “America’s most beautiful concert hall” to visual interior splendor while simultaneously enhancing its famously clear and intimate acoustics.

The work also restored the hall’s original 6,025-pipe concert organ, making it once again usable (from a new location within the hall) for the first time in half a century.

Accelerando con moto: Welser-Möst and a New Century Franz Welser-Möst became The Cleveland Orchestra’s seventh music director in the autumn of 2002. His charge has been to carry the ensemble forward

16

— first into the new millennium and now into the Orchestra’s own Second Century.

His playbook has been to build on the best traditions of the past while steering clearly and with passionate directness to argue for music’s renewed relevance in a changing world.

He has expanded repertoire while further honing the Orchestra’s flexibility for modern (and older) music. The Orchestra’s long operatic tradition has been augmented with the return of fullystaged opera productions to Severance Hall, including cutting-edge presentations filled with 21st-century technological know-how and wonder — all in service to telling the plotlines of challenging works in compelling ways and with superb casts.

Welser-Möst has also led The Cleveland Orchestra in a series of acclaimed video and other recordings, further enlarging the ensemble’s storied recorded legacy. He has advocated for a renewed and extended focus aimed at serving the people of Cleveland, through expanded education offerings and a new diversity of programming and concert formats.

Special ticketing programs offer free tickets for families to bring children with them to concerts, with a notable increase of younger people attending performances — with 20% of audiences now aged 25 and younger.

In the past decade, the Orchestra has also extended its work as Cleveland’s ambassador to the world, regularly showcasing its extraordinary musicianship in music capitals and at festivals and in residencies across Europe and on tour in the

About the Orchestra

The Cleveland Orchestra

EDWINS

PHOTO BY ROGER MASTROIANNI

United States.

With his contract extended to encompass a tenure of at least two decades, Welser-Möst continues to prepare The Cleveland Orchestra for its Second Century, serving the art of music and the people of its hometown earnestly and with the utmost dedication to harness the power of music to change lives and to inspire creativity and understanding.

Tellingly, throughout the Orchestra’s history, there has been a strong tradition of leadership continuity, not just artistically (with only seven Music Directors in 100 years), but also in Presidents of the governing non-profit Board of Trustees (just twelve), and staff Executive Directors (only nine), providing a steady but focused progression of guidance propelling the Orchestra forward. Contrasted with the shifting sands at some other well-known ensembles, this unity of purpose and personnel has helped carry the Orchestra forward institutionally as a tireless agent for inspiring its hometown through great music.

For, in truth, the Orchestra’s greatest strength remains the citizens of its hometown and the region surrounding Cleve-

land, whose forebears imagined such a world-famous orchestra could exist and then set about to make it happen. Individuals and corporations financed the Orchestra’s growth while insisting on excellence as the goal, not just musically, but in programs for educating and inspiring the city’s youth.

That support continues today at uniquely high levels, boasting the greatest generosity of per capita donations for any major American orchestra.

Thus, the extraordinary dream continues — marching The Cleveland Orchestra into a Second Century of achievement and success, arm in arm with the community whose name it carries.

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Shaker Square, Ohio 44120 | 216.921.3333 Severance Hall 2017-18

About the Orchestra

Just 10 minutes from Severance Hall.

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1918

Seven music directors have led the Orchestra, including George Szell, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Franz Welser-Möst.

16th

1l1l 11l1 l1l1 1

The 2017-18 season will mark Franz Welser-Möst’s 16th year as music director.

SEVERANCE HALL, “America’s most beautiful concert hall,” opened in 1931 as the Orchestra’s permanent home.

40,000

each year

Over 40,000 young people attend Cleveland Orchestra concerts each year via programs funded by the Center for Future Audiences, through student programs and Under 18s Free ticketing — making up 20% of audiences.

52 53%

Over half of The Cleveland Orchestra’s funding each year comes from thousands of generous donors and sponsors, who together make possible our concert presentations, community programs, and education initiatives.

4million

Follows Followson onFacebook Facebook(as (asofofJune Jan 2018) 2016)

The Cleveland Orchestra has introduced over 4.1 million children in Northeast Ohio to symphonic music through concerts for children since 1918.

129,452 133,797

1931

150

concerts each year.

The Orchestra was founded in 1918 and performed its first concert on December 11.

The Cleveland Orchestra performs over

THE CLEVEL AND ORCHESTRA

BY THE NUMBERS

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T H E

C L E V E L A N D

Franz Welser-Möst M U S I C D I R E C TO R

CELLOS Mark Kosower*

Kelvin Smith Family Chair

SECOND VIOLINS Stephen Rose * FIRST VIOLINS William Preucil CONCERTMASTER

Blossom-Lee Chair

Jung-Min Amy Lee ASSOCIATE CONCERTMASTER

Gretchen D. and Ward Smith Chair

Peter Otto FIRST ASSOCIATE CONCERTMASTER

Jessica Lee ASSISTANT CONCERTMASTER

Clara G. and George P. Bickford Chair

Takako Masame Paul and Lucille Jones Chair

Wei-Fang Gu Drs. Paul M. and Renate H. Duchesneau Chair

Kim Gomez Elizabeth and Leslie Kondorossy Chair

Chul-In Park Harriet T. and David L. Simon Chair

Miho Hashizume Theodore Rautenberg Chair

Jeanne Preucil Rose Dr. Larry J.B. and Barbara S. Robinson Chair

Alicia Koelz Oswald and Phyllis Lerner Gilroy Chair

Yu Yuan Patty and John Collinson Chair

Isabel Trautwein Trevor and Jennie Jones Chair

Mark Dumm Gladys B. Goetz Chair

Katherine Bormann Analisé Denise Kukelhan

Alfred M. and Clara T. Rankin Chair James and Donna Reid Chair

Bryan Dumm Muriel and Noah Butkin Chair

Eli Matthews 1 Patricia M. Kozerefski and Richard J. Bogomolny Chair

Sonja Braaten Molloy Carolyn Gadiel Warner Elayna Duitman Ioana Missits Jeffrey Zehngut Vladimir Deninzon Sae Shiragami Scott Weber Kathleen Collins Beth Woodside Emma Shook Dr. Jeanette Grasselli Brown and Dr. Glenn R. Brown Chair

Yun-Ting Lee Jiah Chung Chapdelaine VIOLAS Wesley Collins* Chaillé H. and Richard B. Tullis Chair 1

Charles M. and Janet G. Kimball Chair

Stanley Konopka 2 Mark Jackobs Jean Wall Bennett Chair

Arthur Klima Richard Waugh Lisa Boyko Richard and Nancy Sneed Chair

Lembi Veskimets The Morgan Sisters Chair

Eliesha Nelson Joanna Patterson Zakany Patrick Connolly

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The GAR Foundation Chair

Charles Bernard 2 Helen Weil Ross Chair

Emilio Llinás 2

Lynne Ramsey

Louis D. Beaumont Chair

Richard Weiss 1

The Musicians

Tanya Ell Thomas J. and Judith Fay Gruber Chair

Ralph Curry Brian Thornton William P. Blair III Chair

David Alan Harrell Martha Baldwin Dane Johansen Paul Kushious BASSES Maximilian Dimoff * Clarence T. Reinberger Chair

Kevin Switalski 2 Scott Haigh 1 Mary E. and F. Joseph Callahan Chair

Mark Atherton Thomas Sperl Henry Peyrebrune Charles Barr Memorial Chair

Charles Carleton Scott Dixon Derek Zadinsky HARP Trina Struble * Alice Chalifoux Chair This roster lists the fulltime members of The Cleveland Orchestra.

The number and seating of musicians onstage varies depending on the piece being performed.

The Cleveland Orchestra

2O1 7-18

O R C H E S T R A FLUTES Joshua Smith * Elizabeth M. and William C. Treuhaft Chair

Saeran St. Christopher Marisela Sager 2 Austin B. and Ellen W. Chinn Chair

Mary Kay Fink PICCOLO Mary Kay Fink Anne M. and M. Roger Clapp Chair

OBOES Frank Rosenwein * Edith S. Taplin Chair

Corbin Stair Jeffrey Rathbun 2 Everett D. and Eugenia S. McCurdy Chair

Robert Walters

Samuel C. and Bernette K. Jaffe Chair

CLARINETS Afendi Yusuf * Robert Marcellus Chair

Robert Woolfrey Victoire G. and Alfred M. Rankin, Jr. Chair

Daniel McKelway

HORNS Michael Mayhew § Knight Foundation Chair

Jesse McCormick Robert B. Benyo Chair

Hans Clebsch Richard King Alan DeMattia TRUMPETS Michael Sachs * Robert and Eunice Podis Weiskopf Chair

Jack Sutte Lyle Steelman 2 James P. and Dolores D. Storer Chair

Michael Miller CORNETS Michael Sachs *

ENGLISH HORN Robert Walters

2

Robert R. and Vilma L. Kohn Chair

Yann Ghiro E-FLAT CLARINET Daniel McKelway Stanley L. and Eloise M. Morgan Chair

BASS CLARINET Yann Ghiro BASSOONS John Clouser * Louise Harkness Ingalls Chair

Gareth Thomas Barrick Stees 2 Sandra L. Haslinger Chair

Jonathan Sherwin CONTRABASSOON Jonathan Sherwin

Severance Hall 2017-18

CENTENNIAL SEASON

Mary Elizabeth and G. Robert Klein Chair

PERCUSSION Marc Damoulakis* Margaret Allen Ireland Chair

Donald Miller Tom Freer Thomas Sherwood KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS Joela Jones * Rudolf Serkin Chair

Carolyn Gadiel Warner Marjory and Marc L. Swartzbaugh Chair

LIBRARIANS Robert O’Brien Joe and Marlene Toot Chair

Donald Miller

Michael Miller

ENDOWED CHAIRS CURRENTLY UNOCCUPIED

TROMBONES Massimo La Rosa *

Sidney and Doris Dworkin Chair Sunshine Chair George Szell Memorial Chair

Gilbert W. and Louise I. Humphrey Chair

Richard Stout Alexander and Marianna C. McAfee Chair

Shachar Israel 2 BASS TROMBONE Thomas Klaber

* Principal § 1 2

Associate Principal First Assistant Principal Assistant Principal

EUPHONIUM AND BASS TRUMPET Richard Stout

CONDUCTORS Christoph von Dohnányi

TUBA Yasuhito Sugiyama*

Vinay Parameswaran

Nathalie C. Spence and Nathalie S. Boswell Chair

TIMPANI Paul Yancich * Otto G. and Corinne T. Voss Chair

MUSIC DIRECTOR LAUREATE ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR

Elizabeth Ring and William Gwinn Mather Chair

Lisa Wong ACTING DIRECTOR OF CHORUSES

Frances P. and Chester C. Bolton Chair

Tom Freer 2 Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Smucker Chair

The Musicians

21

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The Cleveland Orchestra

2O1 7-18 CENTENNIAL SEASON

Concert Previews

LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE MUSIC

The Cleveland Orchestra offers a variety of options for learning more about the music before each concert begins.

For each concert, the program book includes program notes commenting on and providing background about the composer and his or her work being performed that week, along with biographies of the guest artists and other information. You can read these before the concert, at intermission, or afterward. (Program notes are also posted ahead of time online at clevelandorchestra.com, usually by the Monday directly preceding the concert.)

The Orchestra’s Music Study Groups also provide a way of exploring the music in more depth. These classes, professionally led by Dr. Rose Breckenridge, meet weekly in locations around Cleveland to explore the music being played each week and the stories behind the composers’ lives.

Free Concert Previews are presented one hour before most subscription concerts throughout the season at Severance Hall.

Cleveland Orchestra Concert Previews are presented before every regular subscription concert, and are free to all ticketholders to that day’s performance. Previews are designed to enrich the concert-going experience.

Concert Previews are made possible in part by a generous endowment gift from Dorothy Humel Hovorka.

Spring Previews: March 15, 16, 17, 18 “The Wow! Factor” (musical works by Dvořák and Barber) with Rose Breckenridge, lecturer and administrator, Cleveland Orchestra Music Study Groups

March 22, 24, 25 “Heralding the Modern, Extending the Past” (musical works by Poulenc and Rachmaninoff ) with guest speaker Emily Laurance, lecturer, Case Western Reserve University

April 5, 7 “Partners in Joy and in Grief” (musical works by Brahms and Suk) with Rose Breckenridge

April 12 “Beethoven — Buttoned and Unbuttoned” (musical works by Beethoven) with Rose Breckenridge

April 13 “Love and Heroes — Gained and Lost” (musical works by Wagner and Beethoven) with Rose Breckenridge

WORTHY OF AN ENCORE (OR TWO)

Severance Hall 2017-18

Concert Previews

23

Committed To Excellence As another long-established Cleveland institution with a global reputation for excellence, we are delighted to continue our support for The Cleveland Orchestra in its centenary year.

47 Offices in 20 Countries squirepattonboggs.com

Local Connections. Global Inuence.

THE

CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA FR ANZ WELSER- MÖST

M U S I C D I R E C TO R

Severance Hall

Thursday evening, March 15, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.

Friday morning, March 16, 2018, at 11:00 a.m. * Saturday evening, March 17, 2018, at 8:00 p.m.

Sunday afternoon, March 18, 2018, at 3:00 p.m.

2O1 7-18 CENTENNIAL SEASON

Alan Gilbert, conductor ANTONÍN DVORÁK (1841-1904)

SAMUEL BARBER (1910-1981)

The Watersprite [Vodník], Opus 107* Cello Concerto, Opus 22 1. Allegro moderato 2. Andante sostenuto 3. Molto allegro e appassionato ALISA WEILERSTEIN, cello

INTER MISSION * DVORÁK

Symphony No. 8 in G major, Opus 88 1.

2.

3.

4.

Allegro con brio Adagio Allegretto grazioso Allegro ma non troppo

This weekend’s concerts are supported through the generosity of the Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP Cleveland’s Own Series sponsorship.

This weekend’s concerts are sponsored by Forest City.

Alisa Weilerstein’s appearance this weekend with The Cleveland Orchestra is made possible by a contribution to the Orchestra’s Guest Artist Fund from Dr. and Mrs. Sam I. Sato.

The Saturday performance is dedicated to Dr. Hiroyuki and Mrs. Mikiko Fujita in recognition of their extraordinary generosity in support of The Cleveland Orchestra’s Annual Fund.

The Cleveland Orchestra’s Friday Morning Concert Series is endowed by the Mary E. and F. Joseph Callahan Foundation. * The Friday Morning concert is performed without intermission and features Barber’s Cello Concerto and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8.

Severance Hall 2017-18

Concert Program — Week 17

25

March 15, 16, 17, 18

2O1 7-18 CENTENNIAL SEASON

THI S WE E KE ND'S CONCE RT Restaurant opens: THUR 4:30 SAT 5:00 SUN 12:00

Concert Preview: BEGINS ONE HOUR BEFORE CONCERT

Severance Restaurant Reservations for dining suggested:

216-231-7373 or via www.UseRESO.com

C O N C E R T P R E V I E W — all concerts

“The Wow! Factor” with Rose Breckenridge, Cleveland Orchestra Music Study Groups FRIDAY MORNING 11:00

DVOŘÁK The Watersprite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 29 (20 minutes)

BARBER

Concert begins: THUR 7:30 SAT 8:00 SUN 3:00

BARBER Cello Concerto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 33 (30 minutes)

DVOŘÁK SYM 8

INTERMISSION (20 minutes)

DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 37

12:20

(35 minutes)

Concert ends: (approx.)

Duration times shown for musical pieces ieces ces es (and intermission) are approximate..

Severance Restaurant

THUR 9:20 SAT 9:50 SUN 4:50

Severance Restaurant and Opus Café

Post-Concert Luncheon following the Friday Morning concert.

Post-concert desserts and drinks

26

This Week’s Concerts ts

The Th e Cl Clev Cleveland evel elan lan and d Or O Orchestra rch ches hesstr tra tra

INTRODUCING THE CONCERT

Goblin, Cello & Symphony

T H I S W E E K ’ S C O N C E R T S offer two national schools, not in competition,

but in excellent contrast. The very European classicism of Antonín Dvořák is tinged with his Bohemian (think “Czech Republic” in today’s geography) homeland’s sensibilities in rhythm, melody, and storytelling. Juxtaposed between two Dvořák works is a concerto by a distinctly mid-20th d-20th century American composer, Samuel Barber.

The evening concerts open with a wonderfully spicey — and somewhat grim — children’s tale turned into music.

Created by Dvořák as one of several storyline tone poems he penned in 1896, The Watersprite tells a tale of conflicting wo orlds (water and air, male and female) and the problematic challenges of fulfilling any contract or understanding. Good feelings give e way to boredom and agitation, and eventually to neglect, escap pe, and revenge. All told with Dvořák’s musical creativity.

As a central focus, the concerts continue — or begin, on Friday morning — with Samuel Barber’s immensely difficult (for the soloist) and clear-headed Cello Concerto, from 1945. If Dvořák had set the standard for cello concertos in 1895, a host of 20th-century composers took up the challenge, including Elgar, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Walton, Lutosławski, and Mr. Barber. This week’s great work tests the e solo player to the limit of his or her technique — this week ably handled by Cleveland-raised Alisa Weilerstein.

To close the evening, guest conductor Alan Gilbert leads Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8, from 1889. This melodious and joyfi joyfilled work is as sunny and bright — and b beautiful — as anything this comp poser ever created. Its rhythms and tunes will w keep you Share your memories smiling for days. of the performance and —Eric Sellen join the conversation online . . . facebook.com/clevelandorchestra twitter: @CleveOrchestra instagram: @CleveOrch (Please note that photography is prohibited during g the performance.)

LIVE RADIO BROADCAST

Saturday evening’s concert is being broadcast live on WCLV (104.9 FM).

The concert will be rebroadcast as part of regular weekly programming on WCLV on Saturday evening, June 16, at 8:00 p.m.

Severance Hall 2017-18

Week 17 — Introducing the Concerts

27

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28

The Cleveland Orchestra

The Watersprite [Vodník], Opus 107 composed 1896

At a Glance

by

Dvořák wrote his tone poem Vodník [“The Watersprite” or “Water Goblin”] in the early months of 1896 as one of three works based on children’s tales by the Czech poet Karel Jaromír Erben. The three were completed by April that year and first performed on June 3, 1896, by the orchestra of the Prague Conservatory conducted by Antonín Bennewitz, presented in the Rudolfinum in Prague.

This work runs almost 20 minutes in performance. Dvořák scored it for 2 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes and english horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas, timpani, percussion (triangle, cymbals, tam-tam, handbell, bass drum), and strings.

The Cleveland Orchestra is presenting The Watersprite for the first time with this weekend’s concerts.

Antonín

DVOŘÁK

About the Music

born September 8, 1841 Nelahozeves, Bohemia

A F T E R C O M P L E T I N G his “New World” Symphony in 1893, Antonín Dvořák composed no more symphonies during the last ten years of his life. He turned his attention instead to operatic writing, creating three new stageworks, and also to symphonic poems, of which he wrote five in close succession in the two years 1896-97. The first four of these, including The Watersprite (also known in English as “The Water Goblin”), were based on narrative folk-ballads by the Czech poet Karel Jaromír Erben (1811-1870), often with an ironic or fatalistic or supernatural twist. The last of the five, A Hero's Song, was of a different kind, representing a general image of heroism.

It is surprising that Dvořák had not written symphonic poems before this time. Franz Liszt had shown how much could be done at least forty years earlier, compressing the expressive range of a symphony into a single movement — while at the same time infusing a strong emotional depth of feeling in order to create one of the most romantic forms of musical expression, all without using sung words.

Across the 19th century, French and Russian composers wrote symphonic poems in abundance, and in Bohemia Dvořák’s compatriots Smetana and Fibich had contributed a number of works to the genre, including Smetana’s strongly nationalist cycle of six symphonic poems Má Vlast [My Homeland], completed in 1880.

By the time Dvořák embarked on his first, The Watersprite, in 1896, Richard Strauss had created a sensation with such pieces as Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel, both with vivid action depicted

died May 1, 1904 Prague

Severance Hall 2017-18

About the Music

29

in orchestral language. Dvořák, too, planned pieces with a story depicted in the music, and, from correspondence and jottings, it is possible to suppose that he intended to create a set of six symphonic poems as Czech folk stories to match Smetana’s set of six historical-national poems.

Like those of the Brothers Grimm and many other folktales, Erben’s stories are cruel and gruesome, yet they serve admirably for story-telling in music. The first three Dvořák-Erben symphonic poems were sketched in rapid succession in a little over two weeks between January 6 and 22, 1896. The orchestration took longer, lasting The composer devised about twelve weeks. The three works — The themes for these works Watersprite, The Noon Witch, and The Golden by setting certain lines of Spinning Wheel — were finished in April and Erben’s poems to music collectively labelled “First Series,” suggesting that a later group of three would follow. which are then played by In fact, there was to be only one more Erben the orchestra, not sung. symphonic poem, The Wild Dove, composed It is possible to show that later in 1896. The unrelated A Hero’s Song followed in 1897. half a dozen themes All three of the first group were privately found in The Watersprite performed in the Rudolfinum, Prague, on June precisely match the 3, 1896, by the orchestra of the Prague Conmeter of Erben’s verses. servatory conducted by Antonín Bennewitz.

The first public performance of The Watersprite was given that November in London, where Dvořák had travelled many times and where his music had an enthusiastic following.

THE MUSIC AND THE STORY

The composer devised themes for these works by setting certain lines (in Czech) of Erben’s poems to music which are then played by the orchestra, not sung. It is possible to show that half a dozen themes found in The Watersprite precisely match the meter of Erben’s verses. This contributes strongly to the folk-like flavor and musical unity of the work.

The narrative is not hard to follow. At the beginning, we hear the theme for the Goblin (or Watersprite), who is sitting in a poplar tree beside the lake in the moonlight, sewing red boots for his wedding to the young girl he intends to take down into the lake with him. The tempo slows for the clarinets to introduce the young girl and her mother getting ready to go down to the lake to do the laundry. Her mother (in minor) warns her not to

30

About the Music

The Cleveland Orchestra

go, having had a bad dream, but the clarinet tune and the major key tells us that she is determined to go.

The Goblin is waiting. The girl steps on a plank to approach the water, but it breaks with a crash, plunging her into the lake. She is now in the Watersprite’s power. A slow soulful melody (clarinets and violas) shows her unhappy life as the Goblin’s wife, trapped in his gloomy underwater kingdom. Her only consolation is a new baby, to whom she sings a lullaby. But this arouses the Goblin’s anger.

After a sinister passage with the tuba moaning in the depths, she begs the Goblin to allow her to visit her mother. This too arouses his anger, but he eventually relents. She may visit her mother, but she must leave her baby with him and return before the vesper bell.

Cellos, supported by trombones and tubas, recount her reunion with her mother.

The Goblin waits for his wife’s return. The vesper bell is heard but she has not returned. So the Goblin goes to the house and knocks several times, ever more loudly. The mother will not let her daughter return. A storm arises and howls. The mother tells the Goblin to bring the child to the house. The Goblin brings back the child, but a horrifying thud is heard. There, outside the door, lies “a child’s head without a body, a child’s body without a head.� —Hugh Macdonald Š 2018

Dvořåk conducting a concert of Czech music at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.

Painting by V. E. Vadherny.

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About the Music

31

All the news that was fit to paint.

Centuries before Instagram, Twitter, or even photography, view paintings recorded history as it happened. This exhibition is your chance to travel back in time to be an eyewitness to the most significant events in 18th-century Europe.

February 25 – May 20, 2018

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King Charles III Visiting Pope Benedict XIV at the Coffee House of the Palazzo del Quirinale (detail), 1746. Giovanni Paolo Panini (Italian, 1691–1765). Oil on canvas; 124 × 174 cm. Napoli, Museo di Capodimonte, 205. Image: Scala / Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali / Art Resource, NY

Cello Concerto, Opus 22 composed 1945

At a Glance

by

Samuel

BARBER born March 9, 1910 West Chester, Pennsylvania died January 23, 1981 New York City

Severance Hall 2017-18

Barber wrote his Cello Concerto in 1945 on a commission from Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra to create a new work for cellist Raya Garbousova. He completed the score in November 1945. The work was premiered on April 5, 1946, in Boston, with Koussevitzky conducting and Garbousova as the soloist.

This concerto runs almost 30 minutes in performance. Barber scored

it for 2 flutes, oboe, english horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 3 trumpets, timpani, percussion (snare drum), and strings, plus solo cello.

The Cleveland Orchestra has presented this concerto on only one previous occasion, at a concert during the 2013 Blossom Music Festival, with Mark Kosower playing the solo role under the baton of Bramwell Tovey.

About the Music S A M U E L B A R B E R was called up into the U.S. Army Air Force

in April 1943 and for most of the first year of his service he was posted to Texas. By 1945, he was working for the Office of War Information and was able to live mostly at his home in Mount Crisco, near New York City, in a house he had built with his partner, the composer Gian-Carlo Menotti. (In today’s world, these two men would have married one another, but it was a different era back then.) The house had studios at opposite ends, so that neither composer would disturb the other when working.

Barber had already established his reputation as an orchestral composer with his First Symphony, first performed by The Cleveland Orchestra in 1937, and with his two Essays for orchestra and the now famous Adagio for Strings, originally written for string quartet. His music was featured by both Toscanini and Koussevitsky, and the latter gave the first performance of the Second Symphony in Boston in 1944, a work that was later abandoned and then mostly destroyed by the composer.

The originator of Barber’s Cello Concerto was the philanthropist and amateur cellist John Nicholas Brown. A resident of Providence, Rhode Island, Brown was a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s board of trustees. In 1937, he bought a 1689 Stradivarius cello, nicknamed the “Archinto.” He later loaned the instrument to the Russian cellist Raya Garbousova, who had been living in the United States since 1939 and was already in great demand as a soloist with American orchestras.

Garbousova was short of stature, but with very large hands, so About the Music

33

Cellist Raya Garbousova (above) and conductor Serge Koussevitzky (at left). Barber’s Cello Concerto was but one of many new works Koussevitzky was involved with during his twenty-five year tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

she could reach stretches that other cellists found difficult if not impossible.

Brown greatly admired Garbousova’s playing and proposed commissioning a concerto for her. Koussevitsky at first recommended the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů for the job, but Brown preferred Barber’s music and so placed the $1000 commission with him.

Barber visited Garbousova and asked her to play everything she knew for him — concertos and sonatas, and even including études and technical exercises — in order to learn the precise limits of her technique. This included studies by Popper and Piatti, which are still today standard material for advanced cello technique. It was a big request of time, but Garbousova agreed.

The result is a concerto that makes extraordinary demands on the soloist. Leonard Rose once commented it was the hardest concerto he had ever played.

Writing it gave Barber some headaches too, for he wrote in March 1945: “It’s a very difficult job and it hasn’t progressed at all. Perhaps spring weather will do the trick.” Perhaps the weather — perhaps the conclusion of World War II — helped bring the effort to conclusion, which was finished on November 27, 1945. The premiere was played by Garbousova in Boston the following April, with two performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music later in the same month.

The concerto won Barber the New York Music Critics’ Circle Award in 1947. The first recording was made not by Garbousova but by Zara Nelsova, who was brought up in Canada and then resident in London, where she made the recording in 1950 with the New

34

About the Music

The Cleveland Orchestra

Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. Garbousova’s own recording was not made until 1966, twenty years after she first played it. At that time, Barber’s music had fallen seriously out of favor in America, being considered insufficiently avant-garde.

Fortunately, his style has gradually worked its way back to recognition as among the finest American creations.

The story is told that Garbousova was standing outside of Royal Albert Hall in London one day near a poster for her upcoming appearance, when Zara Nelsova, who did not know her, wondered if the artist on the poster was any good. “She’s fabulous!”

Garbousova was able to assure Nelsova.

The concerto subscribes to the classical formula of a slow movement framed by two faster movements. Barber himself said of the concerto that it progresses on “its own musical terms, which do not call for verbal description or analysis.” When asked for a program note for a performance in 1950, he conveyed, more forcefully, “the wishes of the composer that no analysis be printed.” Who are we to disregard his wishes? Let this most eloquent of concertos speak for itself.

—Hugh Macdonald © 2018

Severance Hall 2017-18

About the Music

35

Symphony No. 8 in G major, Opus 88 composed 1889

At a Glance

by

Antonín

DVOŘÁK born September 8, 1841 Nelahozeves, Bohemia died May 1, 1904 Prague

Severance Hall 2017-18

Dvořák composed his Eighth Symphony between August and November 1889. It was first performed on February 2, 1890, in Prague, under the composer’s direction. Dvořák was not satisfied with the low fee offered for the symphony by his German publisher, Simrock, and instead sold the work to Novello in London, who published the symphony in 1892 with a dedication to the Czech Academy of Science, Literature, and the Arts, to which Dvořák had been elected in 1890.

The symphony runs about 35

minutes in performance. Dvořák scored it for 2 flutes (second doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (second doubling english horn), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings.

Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony was introduced to The Cleveland Orchestra’s repertoire in October 1938

by Artur Rodzinski. The most recent performances by the Orchestra were given at Severance Hall in February 2007 under the direction of Iván Fischer and at Blossom Music Center in August 2015, led by Gustavo Gimeno.

About the Music P E R H A P S I N R E A C T I O N to the nickname that Dvořák gave to his Ninth Symphony, “From the New World,” his Eighth Symphony has occasionally been called the “London” Symphony, taking its place alongside and competing with Haydn and Vaughan Williams, who also have symphonies named for that great city.

But Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 has little reason to be associated with London other than the fact that it was published by the London publisher Novello, and that only because Dvořák had temporarily fallen out with his longtime Berlin publisher Simrock.

In truth the Seventh has a greater claim to an association with London than the Eighth, since, like Beethoven’s Ninth, it was commissioned by London’s Philharmonic Society. Unlike Beethoven’s Ninth, Dvořák’s Seventh was first performed in London, in 1885, at a time when the composer was making frequent visits to England, appearing in many English cities as well as in London and making many friends among British musicians.

The Eighth, in contrast, was not commissioned by anyone and was written during the summer months of 1889 at Dvořák’s country retreat in the Bohemian hills, where he always felt happy and productive.

Dvořák biographer John Clapham has called this the happiAbout the Music

37

est of the composer’s symphonies, and points out that, by this point in his career and life, Dvořák was no longer striving to impress an audience or emulate another composer (i.e. Brahms); he was just allowing his playful invention to sprinkle ideas over four movements, to create a symphony that spoke to himself.

Dvořák finished the score on November 8, 1889, and conducted the first performance in Prague in April 1890. He conducted it again in London in the same month, then in Frankfurt in November, and again in Cambridge in June 1891 when receiving an honorary degree.

The symphony had soon been played to great success across Europe, demonstrating how highly Dvořák was regarded in classical music circles at the time. Johannes Brahms, never easy to please, admired the work when he heard it in Vienna in January 1891. He called it “musically captivating and beautiful,” despite his ongoing misgivings about Dvořák’s idiosyncratic approach to symphonic form.

Brahms may have been disconcerted by the opening of the first movement, which is marked Allegro con brio but actually proceeds at a leisurely pace with a tune in the minor mode presented in unison by two clarinets, one bassoon, two horns and all the cellos — an extraordinarily inventive bit of scoring. Even when a solo flute

38

About the Music

The Cleveland Orchestra

offers a quite different theme (in major, not minor), it scarcely feels like a symphonic allegro movement. Rapid activity soon infiltrates the texture, however, and the music builds to a robust, full declaration of the flute’s theme, the point at which the body of the first movement is definitively launched.

More important themes make their appearance, establishing a strong body of material for symphonic development.

The movement’s development section itself begins with a trick Dvořák may have learned from Brahms. The music appears to be going back to the beginning with a literal repeat of the minorkey music and the flute’s major-key solo. This is not, however, a repeat of the exposition, as Mozart or Beethoven might have indicated. Very soon instead, an exploration of new territory begins. The movement concludes in unmistakable high spirits.

Next comes the symphony’s slow movement, notable for again moving from minor to major, with Perhaps only in the latter episode marked by more solo material for Dvorák’s famous the flute and an enchanting series of descending Slavonic Dances do octave scales as accompaniment. This is the kind of music that lingers in memory long after the perforwe get a similar clear mance is over. Towards the end of the movement, sense that this comthere is a strong build-up of tension, in a manner poser is composing that recalls Schubert’s angry eruptions, and then, entirely for his own like Schubert, the music falls back to sweet, quiet tones as if nothing had happened. enjoyment. The Eighth The third movement is an elegant waltz, and Symphony is fun-filled its Trio section seems to have been created espeand jovial music of cially to define the word “lilt.” a special character.

The fourth movement finale, on the other hand, defies definition, beyond appearing to be a set of crazy variations on a lovely theme played by the cellos. The opening trumpet fanfare — perhaps in imitation to a bugle call to arms — is sufficient warning that no orthodox finale should be expected. Only in the famous Slavonic Dances do we get such a clear sense that Dvořák is composing entirely for his own enjoyment. This is fun-filled and jovial music of a special character, to which the trombones at the end contribute a hearty Amen.

—Hugh Macdonald © 2018 Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin.

Severance Hall 2017-18

About the Music

39

Alan Gilbert American conductor Alan Gilbert is chief conductor designate of the NDR Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. He served as music director of the New York Philharmonic 2009-17, and was previously music director of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra 2000-08. He was principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Orchestra (now Elbphilharmonie) from 2004-15, prior to his appointment as chief conductor, which begins with the 2019-20 season.

Alan Gilbert is a frequent guest conductor with leading orchestras across the globe. Recent European engagements have included his staged operatic debut at La Scala with a new production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, and additional performances with London’s Academy of St Martin in the Fields to continue their recording of Beethoven’s complete piano concertos with Inon Barnatan.

Mr. Gilbert’s eight-year tenure with the New York Philharmonic, where he was the first native New Yorker to hold the post, was transformative in scope of the change that helped bring America’s oldest symphony orchestra into the 21st century.

He led several innovative opera presentations and launched two initiatives — Contact! and NYPhil Biennial — to explore new music and music’s relationships and interactions within contemporary society.

Born to two New York Philharmonic violinists, Alan Gilbert learned violin, viola, and piano as a youth. He studied music at Harvard University and conducting at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School. In 1994, he won both the Georg Solti Prize and first prize in the Internation-

Severance Hall 2017-18

Guest Artist

al Competition for Music Performance in Geneva. He served as a conducting assistant and then assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra 1994-97. He most recently returned as a guest conductor for Severance Hall concerts in March 2016.

After serving as assistant concertmaster of the Santa Fe Opera in 1993, and making his debut there in 2001, Alan Gilbert was the opera’s first music director, serving 2003-06. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2008 leading John Adams’s Doctor Atomic, the DVD of which received a Grammy Award.

He also has conducted the Los Angeles Opera, Royal Swedish Opera, Vienna State Opera, and the Zurich Opera.

Mr. Gilbert’s honors include election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2014), being named an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government (2015), and receiving the Foreign Policy Association Medal (2015). He is director of conducting and orchestral studies at the Juilliard School, where he holds the William Schuman Chair in musical studies.

Alan Gilbert and his wife, cellist Kajsa William-Olsson, are the parents of three children. For more information, please visit www.alangilbert.com.

41

north O point portfolio managers c o r p o r a t i o n Ronald J. Lang Diane M. Stack Daniel J. Dreiling

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42

The Cleveland Orchestra

Alisa Weilerstein American cellist Alisa Weilerstein is internationally praised for her technical assurance and impassioned musicianship. The Cleveland native made her Cleveland Orchestra debut at age 13 in October 1995.

Her most recent performances here were in November 2014.

Ms. Weilerstein appears with major North American and European orchestras, gives recitals throughout the United States and Europe, and performs at music festivals internationally. Recent seasons have included performances with Washington D.C.’s National Symphony, Miami’s New World Symphony, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, and the Tokyo Symphony, among other well-known ensembles.

A champion of new music, Alisa Weilerstein has performed Osvaldo Golijov’s Azul and Omaramor, as well as the world premieres of Lera Auerbach’s 24 Preludes for cello and piano, Pascal Dusapin’s Outscape, and Gabriel Kahane’s song cycle, Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight. She performed the New York premiere of Matthias Pintscher’s Reflections on Narcissus and the world premiere of his cello concerto.

As a chamber musician, Ms. Weilerstein performs with her parents, Donald and Vivien, as part of the Weilerstein Trio.

She also collaborates frequently with Inon Barnatan and Anthony McGill.

An exclusive Decca Classics artist, Alisa Weilerstein’s recording of Elgar’s and Elliott Carter’s concertos was named “Recording of the Year” in 2013 by BBC Music

Severance Hall 2017-18

Guest Artist

magazine. Her other albums feature concertos by Dvořák and Shostakovich, along with unaccompanied 20th-century cello works.

In 2011, Alisa Weilerstein was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Other honors include Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal prize for exceptional achievement, the 2006 Leonard Bernstein Award, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

First Lady Michelle Obama invited Ms. Weilerstein to perform at the White House in 2009.

Later that year, she toured Venezuela with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, and often teaches and performs with that orchestra as part of its El Sistema program of music education.

Alisa Weilerstein is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Young Artist Program, where she worked with Cleveland Orchestra cellist Richard Weiss. In 2004, she earned a degree in Russian history from Columbia University.

Alisa Weilerstein serves as an advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, having been diagnosed with type I diabetes at age nine.

For more information, please visit www.alisaweilerstein.com.

43

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The Cleveland Orchestra

orchestra news

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

Tristan & Isolde: April 21, 26, 29 Spring opera presentation features Wagner’s dramatic score of longing with Franz Welser-MÖst leading cast of internationally-renowned singers

STEMME

SIEGEL

VON DER DAMERAU

The Cleveland Orchestra’s spring opera presentation of Tristan and Isolde is led by music director Franz Welser-Möst in three opera-in-concert performances, April 21, 26, and 29. The opera is being presented this year as part of a larger festival titled The Ecstasy of Tristan and Isolde. In this special two-week series of concerts revolving around Wagner’s Romantic opera, Welser-Möst explores the depths and wonder of ecstasy — the human journey toward transcendence and understanding, through music, art, and belief.

Commenting on the opera, Welser-Möst says: “If Beethoven marks the start of the Romantic Era in music, which is surely true, there can also be no arguing that Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde represents the ultimate high point of that same Romanticism. In this score, Wagner broke apart the tonal harmonic system to create a sense of longing, to search for rest and peace and home, for the ultimate fulfillment of love. With this opera, Wagner unleashed music from the past and announced the start of our modern world.”

The larger festival features two additional Cleveland Orchestra concerts led by Welser-Möst on April 25 and 28, along with a screening of Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia in collaboration with the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque on April 22. April 25 features Messiaen’s TurangalîlaSymphonie, while April 28 offers a range of musical works for chorus, brass, and orchestra, and features the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus along with organist Paul Jacobs.

Explaining his concept for the larger festival, Welser-Möst commented: “Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde is an ecstatic piece. In the ending, in Isolde’s ‘Love-Death’ or Liebestod, this woman transcends

Severance Hall 2017-18

ANGER

HELD

her own existence, and finds a deep understanding, of love and life, in death. For some people, ecstasy may be easier to understand through the word ‘transcendence.’ Both words have meanings beyond the usual — of “being outside yourself” in ecstasy, or of becoming ‘more than’ or transcending beyond the normal. In planning the season, and with Tristan and Isolde already on the calendar, I kept coming back to this idea. I became excited at thinking about how much other music there is that touches around these ideas, of religious ecstasy, becoming one with god, of personal ecstasy, of coming to understanding and enlightenment. I think for many people, musical performances are often a channel to understanding and transcendence, of being more than yourself and at peace. And so I worked to develop a festival around this idea.”

Because of the length of the opera itself, Concert Previews will not be presented just prior to each performance. However, ticketholders for the opera are invited to one of several free concert previews taking place in the week ahead of time. Those daytime previews are being held on April 17, 18, and 19 at local libraries, and are part of The Cleveland Orchestra’s annual Music Study Group program. Participants can learn about the history of Tristan and Isolde, discuss the life of Richard Wagner, and be guided through musical listening examples with Rose Breckenridge.

Times and locations can be found on the Orchestra’s website.

Q&A

Cleveland Orchestra News

See also a special Q&A with Franz Welser-Möst discussing the opera and related concerts. . . . . . . . . See pages 93-95

45

orchestra news

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

Blossom turns 50!

Northeast Ohio's landmark summer music park reaches half-century milestone — having entertained more than 20 million fans with concerts across all genres Orchestra announces special line-up for 2018 Blossom Music Festival, presented by The J.M. Smucker Company 50th Anniversary Celebration throughout the summer, presented by The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company Blossom Music Center marks its 50th anniversary in 2018, and The Cleveland Orchestra is planning both a special season for the annual Festival at its summer home and a special season-long celebration for this milestone year.

Programming for the summer season was announced on February 11 — including the Orchestra’s 2018 Blossom Music Festival, presented

by The J.M. Smucker Company. Highlights include a special presentation on Sunday, July 8, of Roger Daltrey Performs The Who’s “Tommy” with The Cleveland Orchestra (details were announced on January 29, with that show going on sale early on February 2), as well as three movie presentations featuring the Orchestra performing the complete score soundtracks for each film, and a season-opening concert led by Franz Welser-Möst, plus the traditional Fourth-of-July band concerts led by Loras John Schissel.

As part of the Festival, The Cleveland Orchestra’s special Blossom 50th Anniversary Celebration, sponsored by The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, will offer special events and debut new special initiatives throughout the summer. These include a special Benefit Evening: A Symphony of Food & Wine on July 13 presented by Blossom Friends of The Cleveland Orchestra and featuring dinner onstage in the Pavilion with a wine auction and performance by members of the Orchestra.

Honorary Chairs for the benefit evening are Peter Van Dijk, who designed the music center’s awardwinning Pavilion, and his wife, Bobbi. Details of the summer’s 50th Anniversary celebrations are being announced throughout the spring.

Since it opened in 1968, Blossom Music Center has become one of our nation’s premier outdoor performing spaces for music of all genres, drawing more than 400,000 visitors each sumSeverance Hall 2017-18

BLOSSOM M U S I C F E S T I VA L

YEARS 1968- 2O18

mer, with cumulative attendance of more than 20 million in Blossom’s 50-year history. Enjoying picnics on the lush grounds while experiencing Cleveland Orchestra concerts highlighted by fireworks, stars, and/or fireflies has become a beloved Northeast Ohio tradition.

Blossom Music Center was created as the summer home of The Cleveland Orchestra and opened in July 1968 with performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony conducted by George Szell. The 200-acre music park features the award-winning and acoustically-acclaimed Blossom Pavilion seating over 5,000 under cover.

The adjoining Blossom Lawn accommodates as many as 15,000 more outside on an expansive natural-bowl amphitheater of grass surrounded by bucolic woods.

Located 25 miles south of Cleveland just north of Akron, Ohio, Blossom is situated in the rolling hills of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which preserves 33,000 acres of natural parkland along the Cuyahoga River. Blossom Music Center was named to honor the Dudley S. Blossom family, who have been major supporters of The Cleveland Orchestra throughout its history. Blossom lies within the city limits of Cuyahoga Falls, in Summit County.

Cleveland Orchestra News

47

orchestra news A.R.O.U.N.D T.O.W.N Recitals and presentations featuring Orchestra musicians

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

Timpanist plays in double concerto at Carnegie Hall

Upcoming local performances by members of The Cleveland Orchestra include: A faculty recital at the Cleveland Institute of Music features a variety of Cleveland Orchestra musicians on Friday evening, April 6. Orchestra members performing include Mary Kay Fink k (flute), Frank Rosenwein (oboe), Robert Woolfrey (clarinet), Barrick Stees (bassoon), Richard King (horn), Chul-In Park a k (violin), Lisa Boyko (viola), Tanya Ell (cello), and Scott B Dixon (bass). The program, which begins D att 8 p.m. in CIM’s Mixon Hall, features musical works by William Mathias, Jurriaan Andriessen, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Rudolf Karel.

Adm mission is free, but ticket reservations are sugg gested. Please visit www. cim.edu for ticketing information. etin

Cleveland Orchestra principal timpani Paul Yancich appeared as soloist in Philip Glass’s Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists at Carnegie Hall on February 27, playing the work with colleague Jim Atwood of the Louisiana Philharmonic in the ensemble’s first performance at New York’s historic concert hall. A review from concertonet. com said “the Philip Glass Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra was far more than a showpiece for a pair of virtuosos kettle-drum whackers. Jim Atwood and Paul Yancich stood behind those nine kettledrums, which were placed like Easter Island statues from the start of the program.

They were obviously muscular masters of their craft. Sorry, masters of their art.” t

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Cleveland Orchestra News

The Cleveland Orchestra

orchestra news

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

Orchestra wins acclaim in New York and Florida . . .

Below are a selection of excerpts from the many positive reviews of The Cleveland Orchestra’s recent concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall and in Florida (Miami and Sarasota): “At 100, The Cleveland Orchestra May (Quietly) Be America’s Best! Sound the trumpets, peal the bells! The Cleveland Orchestra, which many consider one of the finest ensembles in the nation and the world, turns 100 this year. . . . The orchestra has long been renowned for its sound — precise, lithe and transparent, yet not lacking in power or color — and its disciplined work ethic, both honed by a series of strong maestros in the modern era. . . .

Skeptics say that touring orchestras are steeled and on their mettle when they visit Carnegie Hall, adding, ‘They don’t play that way every week at home.’ The Cleveland Orchestra, as I learned during a season (1988-89) spent as its program annotator and editor, plays that way every week, no matter what or where.”

—James Oestreich, New York Times “To my ears, this performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony was bold, brave, even radical.

There was barely a hint of the regret, nostalgia and wallowing that has become the norm, as with Bernstein. Instead, at ferocious speeds and with dauntless control, there was anger, brutality and violence, on the way to an almost lonely, unwelcome death. No fond farewell, this: Mr. Welser-Möst looked physically and emotionally drained by the end.”

—David Allen, New York Times “I join my colleagues in having been deeply impressed by the Clevelanders’ Mahler, particularly the inner movements, which tingled with tension between rough-hewn aggression and Viennese elegance. I wish my colleague critics David Allen and James Oestreich could have been there on Wednesday for Haydn’s ‘The Seasons,’ its silky warmth a contrast with the previous evening’s discomfiting intensity. The dancing exuberance of Autumn was especially impressive; the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus — all-amateur! — sang with both airiness and pungency throughout.”

—Zachary Woolfe, New York Times “The profundity of the instrumental ensemble as a whole in Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 was astounding, the fluctuations from one mood to another, one tempo to another, were seamless and the ensemble sound was magical. This was the performance of the season.”

—Classical Musical Network (New York) “Rather than relying on the sheer weight and power of one of the world’s great orchestras, Welser-Möst emphasized a strong sense of forward momentum, transparent textures and carefully calibrated levels of intensity to express the force of Beethoven’s musical ideas. . . .

Under Welser-Möst’s baton, the orchestra took a fleeter, less obviously portentous approach than many interpretations, expressing the work’s energy through propulsive force rather than volume. . . . In Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, the orchestra played with such dynamic and interpretative range that the performance carried unusual subtlety and depth.”

—South Florida Classical Review

Severance Hall 2017-18

Cleveland Orchestra News

49

orchestra news Read about the music on your cellphone before coming to the concert by visiting ExpressProgramBook.com

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

TH E CLE VE L AN D O RCH E STR A

ing on a desktop computer or tablet. But because the flipbook format is harder to read on a mobile phone, the Orchestra chose to work with its program book partner, Live Publishing Company, to create the ExpressBook for reading on phones.

Flipbooks are available from the Orchestra’s main website at clevelandorchestra.com going back several years. The ExpressBook only has current season programs, beginning the week of any given concert and looking back several concerts.

Feedback and suggestions are welcome and encouraged, and can be sent by emailing to esellen@clevelandorchestra.com.

ExpressProgramBook.com

Earlier this year, The Cleveland Orchestra launched a new website specifically for reading about the music ahead of time, easily and conveniently on your mobile phone. The new service, available online at ExpressProgramBook.com, provides the program notes and commentary about the musical pieces, along with biographies of the soloists and other artists in a simple-to-read format. “This is designed with a clear format and purpose,” comments program book editor Eric Sellen. “Just the basic information, no fancy layout, with text sized to make reading on a phone or other mobile device easy.”

The service was tested for several months, and is now fully available, with information posted a few days prior to most concerts. The site features only the core musical content of each printed book. The complete program book is available online in a “flipbook” format, for view-

SURROUNDED BY SOUND... AT BW. CONSERVATORY “Il Matrimonio Segreto,” March 22-25

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50

Thursday-Saturday, March 22-24, 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, March 25, 2 p.m.

Surround yourself with the sound of the Italian comedic opera masterpiece “The Secret Marriage” by Domenico Cimarosa.

Libretto by Giovanni Bertati.

A co-production of The BW Conservatory and the Department of Theatre and Dance with stage direction by Noa Naamat of The Royal Opera House of London (Covent Garden).

Cleveland Orchestra News

The Cleveland Orchestra

TH E P RO M E TH E U S P ROJ E C T

BE ETHOVE N THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

CLEVELAND May 1O-19 VIENNA May 24-28 TOKYO June 2-7 conducted by Franz Welser-Möst The Cleveland Orchestra’s Centennial Season ends with a special series of concerts on three continents. Franz Welser-Möst examines Beethoven’s nine symphonies through the story of PROMETHEUS, a titan of Greek mythology who defied Zeus to give fire to humanity — sparking imagination, civilization, learning, and creativity. Similarly, BEETHOVEN, a titan of classical music, pursued his own art and energies in service to Promethean beliefs — in the goodness of humanity, and the ongoing heroic struggle to create a better world, filled with justice and human worth. These Festival concerts are a not-to-be-missed experience to hear Beethoven’s genius in its glory and great goodness.

CLEVELAND S E V E R A N C E H A L L MAY 10 Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 (“Eroica”) MAY 11 Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7 MAY 12 Symphonies Nos. 8 and 5 MAY 13 Symphonies Nos. 6 (“Pastoral”) and 2 MAY 17, 18, 19 Symphony No. 9 (“Choral”)

21 6-2 3 1-1111 clevelandorchestra.com TI CK E TS

T HE

CLEVEL AND ORC HE STR A

“We can’t think of a better way to use our resources than to support an organization that brings us such great pleasure.”

Tony and Pat Lauria believe in doing their part to cultivate and celebrate the extraordinary things in life — including wine, food, and music.

For today and for future generations.

Great music has always been important to Tony and Pat Lauria. They’ve been avid subscribers and donors to The Cleveland Orchestra for many years, and it has become such a major part of their lives that they plan international travel around the Orchestra’s schedule in order to enjoy more concerts at home and on tour. “It gives us great pleasure to be a part of The Cleveland Orchestra,” Pat says.

In addition to regularly attending concerts and giving to the annual fund, Tony and Pat have established several Charitable Gift Annuities through the Orchestra, which now pay them a fixed stream of income in return for their gifts. To anyone who is considering establishing a Charitable Gift Annuity, Tony says, “It’s a great investment — for yourself and the Orchestra!”

To receive a confidential, personalized gift annuity illustration and to join the Laurias in their support of The Cleveland Orchestra’s future, contact Dave Stokley, Legacy Giving Officer, at 216-231-8006 or email dstokley@clevelandorchestra.com.

52

The Cleveland Orchestra

orchestra news

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

M . U . S . I .C . I . A . N S . A . L . U .T. E

The Musical Arts Association gratefully acknowledges the artistry and dedication of all the musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra. In addition to rehearsals and concerts throughout the year, many musicians donate performance time in support of community engagement, fundraising, education, and audience development activities. We are pleased to recognize these musicians, listed below, who volunteered for such events and presentations during the 2016-17 season.

Mark Atherton Martha Baldwin Charles Bernard Katherine Bormann Lisa Boyko Charles Carleton Hans Clebsch John Clouser Kathleen Collins Ralph Curry Marc Damoulakis Alan DeMattia Vladimir Deninzon Scott Dixon Elayna Duitman Bryan Dumm Mark Dumm Tanya Ell Kim Gomez Wei-Fang Gu Scott Haigh David Alan Harrell Miho Hashizume Shachar Israel Mark Jackobs Dane Johansen Joela Jones Richard King Thomas Klaber Alicia Koelz Stanley Konopka Mark Kosower Analisé Kukelhan Paul Kushious Jung-Min Amy Lee Yun-Ting Lee Emilio Llinás

Takako Masame Eli Matthews Jesse McCormick Daniel McKelway Donald Miller Michael Miller Robert O’Brien Peter Otto Chul-In Park Joanna Patterson Zakany William Preucil Lynne Ramsey Jeffrey Rathbun Frank Rosenwein Marisela Sager Jonathan Sherwin Thomas Sherwood Emma Shook Joshua Smith Saeran St. Christopher Corbin Stair Lyle Steelman Richard Stout Yasuhito Sugiyama Jack Sutte Kevin Switalski Gareth Thomas Brian Thornton Isabel Trautwein Robert Walters Carolyn Gadiel Warner Scott Weber Richard Weiss Robert Woolfrey Derek Zadinsky Jeffrey Zehngut

Severance Hall 2017-18

Special thanks to musicians for supporting the Orchestra’s long-term financial strength The Board of Trustees extends a special acknowledgement to the members of The Cleveland Orchestra for supporting the institution’s programs by jointly volunteering their musical services for several concerts each season. These donated services have long played an important role in supporting the institution’s financial strength, and were expanded with the 2009-10 season to provide added opportunities for new and ongoing revenuegenerating performances by The Cleveland Orchestra.

“We are especially grateful to the members of The Cleveland Orchestra for this ongoing and meaningful investment in the future of the institution,” says André Gremillet, executive director. “These donated services each year make a measureable difference to the Orchestra’s overall financial strength, by ensuring our ability to take advantage of opportunities to maximize performance revenue. They allow us to offer more musical inspiration to audiences around the world than would otherwise be possible, supporting the Orchestra’s vital role in enhancing the lives of everyone across Northeast Ohio.”

Cleveland Orchestra News

53

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THE

CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA FR ANZ WELSER- MÖST

M U S I C D I R E C TO R

Severance Hall

Thursday evening, March 22, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.

Friday evening, March 23, 2018, at 7:00 p.m. * Saturday evening, March 24, 2018, at 8:00 p.m.

Sunday afternoon, March 25, 2018, at 3:00 p.m.

2O1 7-18 CENTENNIAL SEASON

Stéphane Denève, conductor FRANCIS POULENC (1899-1963)

Pastoral Concerto (for harpischord and orchestra) 1. Allegro molto — Adagio — Allegro molto 2. Andante (Mouvement de Sicilienne) 3. Finale: Presto très gai JORY VINIKOUR, harpsichord

INTER MISSION * SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943)

Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Opus 27* 1.

2.

3.

4.

Largo — Allegro moderato Allegro molto Adagio Allegro vivace

This weekend’s concerts are sponsored by PNC Bank, a Cleveland Orchestra Partner in Excellence.

The Cleveland Orchestra’s Fridays@7 series is sponsored by KeyBank, a Cleveland Orchestra Partner in Excellence.

Jory Vinikour’s appearance this weekend with The Cleveland Orchestra is made possible by a contribution to the Orchestra’s Guest Artist Fund from The Margaret R. Griffiths Trust.

The Thursday performance is dedicated to The Walter and Jean Kalberer Foundation in recognition of their extraordinary generosity in support of The Cleveland Orchestra’s Annual Fund. * The Friday evening concert is performed without intermission and features the Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 without the concerto.

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Concert Program — Week 18

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March 22, 23, 24, 25

Duration times shown for musical pieces (and intermission) are approximate.

THI S WE E KE ND'S CONCE RT Restaurant opens: THUR 4:30 SAT 5:00 SUN 12:00

Concert Preview: BEGINS ONE HOUR BEFORE CONCERT NO PREVIEW ON FRIDAY EVENING

Severance Restaurant Reservations for dining suggested:

216-231-7373 or via www.UseRESO.com

CONCERT PREVIEW Thursday / Saturday / Sunday

“Heralding the Modern, Extending the Past” with guest speaker Emily Laurance, Case Western Reserve University FRIDAY EVENING 7:00

POULENC Pastoral Concerto (for harpsichord and orchestra) . . . . Page 59 (25 minutes)

INTERMISSION

RACHMANINOFF

Concert begins: THUR 7:30 SAT 8:00 SUN 3:00

(20 minutes)

RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 63 (60 minutes)

Share your memories of the performance and join the conversation online . . . facebook.com/clevelandorchestra twitter: @CleveOrchestra instagram: @CleveOrch

Concert ends: (approx.)

(Please note that photography during the performance is prohibited.)

THUR 9:20 SAT 9:50 SUN 4:50

Severance Restaurant and Opus Café

8:15

7

YS@ A ID FR

Fridays@7: Stay after for a relaxed post-concert hour of conversation, drinks, and music.

Evenings: post-concert desserts and drinks Morning: M Mor ornin ning: i g: g po post-concert stst t con concer oncer c t luncheon lun unc nch

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This Week’s Concerts

The Cleveland Orchestra

INTRODUCING THE CONCERT

Rustic & Romantic Melody&Harmony

M U S I C I N T H E 2 0 T H C E N T U R Y evolved in many different directions.

The world’s soundscapes widened and mixed and merged in ever-evolving ways. Yet at the same time, old ideas continued in popularity.

This weekend’s concerts feature two composers from the mainstream of the early 20th century, but with very different sound ideas and conceptions. The Russian Sergei Rachmaninoff was often viewed as an old-fashioned Romantic, filling big pieces with tuneful melodies and emotionally-wresting (but very satisfying) musical form. The French Francis Poulenc was taken to be more daring, but trod a clearly French road of elegant-sounding innovation.

Both men, in truth, were a mix of the old and the new, moving (even pushing) history forward while still tenderly and creatively caressing the best musical ideas of yesterday.

Poulenc’s Concert champêtre (or, in English, the “Pastoral” or “Rustic” Concerto) was premiered in 1929.

Written for Wanda Landowska, who almost single-handedly revived modern interest in the harpsichord, this is a work of great interest and deft touches — mixing the modern with neo-classical, Baroque foundations with new-fangled divergence. Jory Vinikour plays the solo part.

After intermission — or as the entire focus for Friday evening’s concert — guest conductor Stéphane Denève leads Rachmaninoff’s immensely popular Second Symphony. Premiered in 1908, this tunefully large-scale work ably demonstrates this great composer’s immense gifts, for melody, for structure, for pacing, for orchestration, for emotional — and musical — fire. Enjoy! j y —Eric Sellen ABOVE: Composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (MIDDLE, IN BACK) in Cleveland in 1923, with (FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) music director Nikolai Sokoloff, Mrs. Natalya Rachmaninoff, orchestra manager Adella Prentiss Hughes, and Mrs. Lyda Sokoloff.

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Week 18 — Introducing the Concerts

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Pastoral Concerto [Concert champêtre] for harpsichord and orchestra composed 1927-28

At a Glance Poulenc wrote his Concert champêtre [“Pastoral Concerto”] in 192728. The first performance took place on May 3, 1929, at Paris’s Salle Pleyel, with Wanda Landowska as the soloist and the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris conducted by Pierre Monteux.

This work runs about 25 minutes in performance. Poulenc scored it for an orchestra of 2 flutes (doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (second doubling

by

Francis

POULENC born January 7, 1899 Paris died January 30, 1963 Paris

Special Thanks to the Conservatory of Music at Baldwin Wallace University for the generous loan of their American harpsichord built

by William Richmond Dowd (1922-2008).

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english horn), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion (xylophone, snare drum, tenor drum, bass drum, tambourine, triangle, cymbals), and strings (specified as 8-8-4-4-4), plus the solo harpsichord.

The Cleveland Orchestra is presenting this work for the first time at this weekend’s concerts.

About the Music S O M E A U T H O R I T I E S claim that the harpsichord never quite

became extinct in the 19th century because there was always a group of specialists who attempted to revive music of the Baroque and earlier centuries, with appropriate instruments.

Even with that limited activity behind-the-scenes, however, the “instrument of plucked strings” lost out entirely to the piano’s hammered strings — in public thought, with amateur players in home parlors, and most especially in concert halls and recitals.

At the start of the 20th century, there was a major movement to revive the harpsichord, in large part to enable audiences to hear the favored instrument of Bach and Handel (voiced as they had heard their own keyboard music), but also to interest contemporary composers in the possibilities of new works (utilizing this “new” old sound).

Two rival Parisian piano makers, Pleyel and Erard, both exhibited harpsichords at the Paris Exposition of 1889. It failed to “catch on,” however, because it was soft-voiced — and generally considered too quiet in volume to be heard with an orchestra in a large hall.

The first modern virtuoso of the instrument was Wanda Landowska, born in Poland in 1879 and resident in Paris from 1900 onwards. She gave recitals of Bach and other earlier composers, and had Pleyel build her a harpsichord to her own specification. This had two keyboards and was heavier and louder than 19th-century harpsichords. Later harpsichords built for About the Music

59

her were even bigger and louder — to the point where witty critics declared that sooner or later Wanda Landowska would invent the grand piano all over again.

A FORTUNE FOCUSED ON MUSIC

Also in the early 20th century, in Paris, Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, had the good sense to inherit a fortune from her father (his name had become and still may be synonymous with sewing machines) and to take a title from her husband, a French Prince. She devoted these resources and considerable good taste and judgement to commissioning new works from contemporary composers. Also in support of the musical arts, she also gave fashionable concerts and hosted music theater presentations in her enormous private salon in Paris. When composer Manuel de Falla received a commission from her, he composed an intriguing theater piece, El Retablo de Maese Pedro [“Master Peter’s Puppet Show”] based on Don Quixote and performed in her salon in June 1923. Having met and heard Wanda Landowska a few years earlier, Falla included a harpsichord in his scoring, but required that it produce “as powerful a sonority as possible,” in the chamber-sized orchestra.

Present at that 1923 performance was the 24-year-old Francis Poulenc, enjoying his newly found celebrity as a member of France’s group of young composers known as “Les Six.” His role at the performance was to assist his piano teacher, Ricardo Viñes, in manipulating the enormous marionette of Don Quixote. Poulenc quickly became a regular member of the Princess’s circle, and he eventually received commissions from her — resulting in the Concerto for Two Pianos, first performed in 1932, and the Concerto for Organ, first performed in 1938.

POULENC WRITES FOR LANDOWSK A

Meanwhile Landowska had inspired both composers to write new works for her. Falla’s Harpsichord Concerto was not actually commissioned by her, but it was certainly written for her and first performed by her in 1926.

In the following year, she extended a commission to Poulenc, so it was for her that he composed his Pastoral Concerto — in French, Concert champêtre, and alternatively translated as “Rustic Concerto.”

In the asking, Landowska invited him to her home in St-Leu-la-Forêt, a little north of Paris, and the sound of his host playing Bach in rustic surroundings supplied him with a title and some hints about style.

The Pastoral Concerto exhibits Poulenc’s characteristic instinct

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About the Music

The Cleveland Orchestra

for allowing a musical work to get faster and faster, before bringing it to a sudden halt, with a few very slow gestures, or silence, or a pair of solemn chords. Very often, such swift music then resumes, after this kind of cleansing has taken place.

If “champêtre” in the title implies an allusion to pastoral music, the slow movement’s Sicilienne tempo provides another link. The style is neo-Classical, or, more accurately, neoBaroque; there are suggestions of Alexandro Scarlatti and of the French claveçinistes, sometimes of Stravinsky, and also, in certain phrasings, of folksong. Yet the whole is much more adventurous and varied than many Baroque concertos.

Poulenc clearly understood that with its lack of sustaining power, the harpsichord was not suited to legato melodies, so he prefers to make it busy in both hands, while longer themes are assigned to the orchestral winds. Because of its plucked mechanism, the harpsichord can play only at a fixed dynamic level — hence the success of the pianoforte (later just the “piano”) — as a rival in the late 18th century. Yet Poulenc marks the keyboard part with dynamic markings: mezzo-forte here, piano there, even fff (fortississimo) where needed. The designs for some of Landowska’s instruments had stops that could provide dynamic variation of this sort.

The first movement’s many changes of tempo and its abundant introduction of new tunes hardly suggest baroque procedures in any way at all. It has a slow introduction, and the first Allegro opens with the harpsichord on its own, with plenty of those crisp, dense chords in the left hand that Landowska loved to feature.

Beware the false ending — what sounds like a final chord is followed by a series of spread chords on the harpsichord, but they are not the beginning of the slow, middle movement. The first movement still has some of its own buoyant energy to work out.

The true slow movement sustains its gentle rhythm and affecting melody for many pages, broken only by a modest cadenza for the soloist.

Within the last movement’s high spirits can be found (or heard) a few tributes to Bach, but the real style, including the scoring and the tunes, are all Poulenc’s own.

—Hugh Macdonald © 2018

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About the Music

Wanda Landowska at one of her specially-built harpsichords.

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Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Opus 27 composed 1906-07

At a Glance

by

Sergei

RACHMANINOFF born April 1, 1873 Semyonovo, Russia died March 28, 1943 Beverly Hills, California

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Rachmaninoff composed his Second Symphony in 1906-07. The first performance took place on February 8, 1908, in St. Petersburg, with the composer conducting. The United States premiere was given by Modeste Altschuler and the Russian Musical Society in New York on January 14, 1909.

This symphony runs about an hour in performance. Rachmaninoff scored it for 3 flutes (third doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (third doubling english horn), 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (side drum, bass drum, cymbals,

glockenspiel), and strings.

Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony was introduced to Cleveland by the visiting Boston Symphony Orchestra, which played it at Grays Armory in January 1911, under Max Fiedler. The Cleveland Orchestra first performed it in March 1920, conducted by Nikolai Sokoloff.

The Cleveland Orchestra and Nikolai Sokoloff recorded Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony in May 1928, using a score especially prepared and shortened by the composer; this “complete” recording was released as a set of twelve 78 rpm discs.

About the Music J O H A N N E S B R A H M S is well known for a long reluctance to

compose his First Symphony, until he was old enough and mature enough (he was forty-three by the time of the premiere) to offer something worthy of himself and of the heritage of Beethoven’s symphonies. Beethoven himself had not written a symphony until he was thirty.

For Rachmaninoff, however, the difficulty was writing not his first symphony but his second. Symphony No. 1 was composed in 1895-96 and first performed in St. Petersburg the next year, in 1897, just before the composer’s twenty-fourth birthday. The concert was one of the famous rejections of musical history, when a poor performance incompetently conducted by composer and teacher Alexander Glazunov was savaged by conservative critics — and rejected by the public.

Why? In the score for the First Symphony, Rachmaninoff was not tearing up the classical rule-book nor overturning sacred traditions of musical language. He was merely building on the enormous achievements of Russian composers of the previous generation, while flexing his own brilliant musical muscles.

Symphony No. 1 was an ambitious — and unwieldy work — but it surely did not deserve so harsh a reception.

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63

The effect on Rachmaninoff was devastating. For three years, he lost confidence in his ability to compose. His recovery was effected in part by hypnosis (or that new medical procedure allowed him to reconsider his outlook and to believe in himself again).

His return to creative work was signaled by the Second Piano Concerto and its immediate success. Yet he still hesitated to attempt a second symphony. Although he made some sketches in 1902, he was not ready to embark on the serious effort it needed until 1906.

The composer’s cousin, Alexander Ziloti, also a virtuoso pianist, took over the direction of the Moscow Philharmonic Society’s concerts in 1902 and boldly (and prematurely) announced the performance of a new Rachmaninoff symphony in both of his first two seasons.

At the beginning of 1907, Rachmaninoff wrote: “While I was planning to get the symphony in a finished state, it became terribly boring and repulsive Rachmaninoff’s Second to me. So I put it aside and started something evokes the opulence and else. The world would not have known about emotional assurance of the my work if Ziloti had not wormed out of me Edwardian age. As such, it everything I have or will have. I told him that I will have a symphony, but not before the aueventually came under sustumn, because I will begin the orchestration picion in the 1950s for beonly in the summer.”

ing too melodious and too passionate. But today we recognize the composer’s immense technical skill and are not embarrassed by the music’s emotional candor.

A NEW SYMPHONY

At this point in his life Rachmaninoff spent his winters in seclusion in Dresden, Germany, attempting to escape the endless obligations of conducting and playing that had been his routine for many years in Russia. He was also troubled by widening signs of political unrest back home.

His summers he spent on his country estate in Russia, a perfect setting for the orchestration of a long symphony. The new work was finished the following winter in Dresden and the performance of Symphony No. 2 took place in St. Petersburg on 26 January, 1908, with Rachmaninoff conducting. A performance in Moscow followed a week later.

This time the reception was enthusiastic, indeed the Second Symphony was played all over the world within a few short years — and frequently for some decades thereafter.

Like Elgar’s First Symphony, also premiered in 1908, Rach-

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About the Music

The Cleveland Orchestra

maninoff’s Second evokes the opulence and emotional assurance of what, in the West (and from a strong British bias) is often called the Edwardian age. As such, it eventually came under suspicion in the 1950s for being too melodious and too passionate. Grove’s Dictionary of Music, in 1954, declared that the success of Rachmaninoff’s music was not likely to last, since “musicians never regarded it with much favor” (or, at least, certain musicians looking for “newer” sounds didn’t). Happily, that prediction has been proved quite wrong, not least because “musicians” (and most everyone else) now recognize the composer’s immense technical skill (the equal of Richard Strauss’s) and the dark complexity of his personality (displayed in later musical works such as The Isle of the Dead), and are not embarrassed by emotional candor (with Elgar and Mahler leading the way, in rather different directions).

THE MUSIC

A lifelong element in Rachmaninoff’s style is his attachment to Russian Orthodox chant. Like Western plainsong, eastern chant moves predominantly by step. So too, generally, do Rachmaninoff’s melodies, which he crafts in an improvisatory manner, beginning with, say, a step up, a step down, two steps up, one down, maybe then allowing for a leap a third down or up. The main themes of the first movement are of this kind, shifting in narrow intervals and growing like a mighty tree from a simple alternation of adjoining notes. So too is the long beautiful melody for clarinet in the slow third movement. An exception is the yearning phrase that opens the slow movement, with its rising thirds and passionate harmony.

Some observers find the church’s Dies Iræ chant in every piece Rachmaninoff wrote, but in truth it is more often the elemental movement of chant (eastern or western) that informs the style, rather than a particular tune.

The first movement has a slow introduction which feels its way towards a climax, perhaps expending more emotional heat than necessary in advance of the main movement, and then subsides. There follows the movement’s main body, marked Allegro, diffident at first but soon blossoming with hidden warmth, gathering speed and intensity towards a second subject laden with rapturous lyricism. With a nod toward classical traditions, the opening exposition is repeated.

The movement’s long development section displays Rachmaninoff’s astonishing skill in handling keys and thematic fragments, truly a working-out of the given material as symphonic practice was Severance Hall 2017-18

About the Music

65

deemed to require it. This includes a strong fanfare-like climax. After the formal return of the main material, a coda increases the tempo and drives home to the finish. In choosing the key of E minor for his symphony, Rachmaninoff would undoubtedly have had Brahms’s Fourth Symphony playing in his mind. The end of his first movement has the same sense of crushing finality that Brahms brought to his finale, although here there are three large movements still to come.

The second movement is not a conventional scherzo, yet it is swift and light, with touches of color from the glockenspiel in playful dialog with the violins. The middle section (the “Trio” in classical usage) is slower, with a broad (and mostly stepwise) melody on the violins. The clarinet introduces the theme with a figure that came back to Rachmaninoff when composing his Symphonic Dances toward the end of his life. Most unexpectedly, this movement breaks into a wild fugue led off by the second violins, and within the fugue there appears an extraordinarily delicate passage of what can only be described as ballet music, involving the heavy brass playing pianissimo, one of Rachmaninoff’s many strokes of genius in this symphony. The start of the movement comes back in due course, including its broad Trio theme, with a long series of fairylike farewells still to come. The originality of this movement has few equals in symphonic literature.

The slow movement, in third place, is one of Rachmaninoff’s most glorious creations, rich and melodious in every detail, quite long but never seeming to be too long. The clarinet shows how Rachmaninoff is master of a long melody that keeps on growing, feeding on itself and finally winding down. Snatches of the first movement are incorporated into the texture and a grand climax is reached using Tchaikovsky’s formula of pushing the top line ever higher and the bass line ever lower. Once again, the richness of the themes take a long time to work themselves out before the movement can close.

The finale fourth movement is also long, but it moves with feverish energy, relaxing only when the grand tune, which we have come to expect in the finales of Russian symphonies, makes its splendid appearance against throbbing triplets. This is another melody that owes nothing to plainchant, but rises and falls with great strides and firmly seals this remarkable triumph of symphonic literature.

—Hugh Macdonald © 2018 Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin.

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About the Music

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Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Sergei Rachmaninoff

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“He grabbed the audience’s attention from his first notes, and never let it go.”—THE GUARDIAN

FINNEY CHAPEL (90 NORTH PROFESSOR STREET, OBERLIN, OHIO 44074) TICKETS: $35 ($30 SENIORS, MILITARY, OC STAFF, FACULTY, ALUMNI, $10 STUDENTS) Partial-season subscription packages are available.

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BE A FRIEND! Our season is made possible in part by Oberlin’s Friends of the Artist Recital Series.

Please call 440-775-8200 to learn how becoming a Friend supports the arts at Oberlin.

Stéphane Denève French conductor Stéphane Denève is music director of the Brussels Philharmonic, principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, director of the Centre for Future Orchestral Repertoire, and music director designate of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He first led The Cleveland Orchestra in March 2007, and most recently appeared here in October 2016.

A graduate of the Paris Conservatoire, Mr. Denève was Georg Solti’s assistant at the Orchestre de Paris and with the Paris National Opera, where he later assisted Georges Prêtre. Mr. Denève also worked with Seiji Ozawa at the Saito Kinen Festival.

After his 1997 debut at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Stéphane Denève was a member of the conducting staff there for two seasons. He made his United States conducting debut in 1999 at the Santa Fe Opera, and has subsequently led productions at the Cincinnati Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Glyndebourne Festival, London’s Royal Opera, La Monnaie, Netherlands Opera, Opéra National de Paris, and Milan’s La Scala.

Stéphane Denève regularly appears as a guest conductor of the world’s major orchestras. Recent engagements include the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Philhar-

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Guest Artist

monia Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Stéphane Denève served as music director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra 200512, and as chief conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra 2011-16. He regularly works with young people at Tanglewood Music Center and at the New World Symphony.

At home in a range of repertoire and a champion of new music, Mr. Denève has a special affinity for the music of France. As a recording artist, he has been acclaimed for conducting works by Connesson, Debussy, Franck, Poulenc, and Roussel on the Chandos, Deutsche Grammophon, Naïve, and Naxos labels. A triple winner of the Diapason d’Or de l’année, he was short-listed in 2012 for Gramophone’s Artist of the Year Award, and won the prize for symphonic music at the 2013 International Classical Music Awards.

For more information, please visit www.stephanedeneve.com.

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Jory Vinikour American harpsichordist Jory Vinikour enjoys a diversified career that includes performances at important festivals, concert halls, and opera houses around the world and as a recitalist and concerto soloist. He is making his Cleveland Orchestra debut with this weekend’s concerts.

Born in Chicago, Jory Vinikour studied in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship with Huguette Dreyfus and Kenneth Gilbert.

He received first prizes in International harpsichord competitions in Warsaw (1993) and as part of the Prague Spring Festival (1994).

With a repertoire ranging from Bach and Handel to Poulenc and Nyman, Mr. Vinikour has appeared as soloist with leading orchestras and chamber ensembles in France, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States. He has also performed with many noted opera companies, including those of Chicago, Glyndebourne, Madrid, and Paris, in Baroque, Classical, and contemporary works.

In 2016, he made his operatic conducting debut in Berkeley, California. The following year, he made his debut with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra on the podium — and at the keyboard.

An advocate for fostering contemporary repertoire for the harpsichord, Mr. Vinikour has premiered works by Stephen Blumberg, Frédéric Durieux, Graham Lynch, Harold Meltzer, and Patricia Morehead, and also performed music by Györ-

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Guest Artist

gy Ligeti, Michael Nyman, and Cyril Scott.

Jory Vinikour’s discography includes operatic albums from Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Erato, and Sony Classics, including DGG’s recordings of Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Marriage of Figaro. His Delos International albums of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and toccatas plus Handel’s 1720 Suites for Harpsichord have been widely praised. His most recent release for Sono Luminus features Bach’s Partitas for Solo Harpsichord.

Cleveland Orchestra principal flute Joshua Smith has recorded Bach’s Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord with Mr. Vinikour.

As an educator, Jory Vinikour has given masterclasses in association with a variety of schools and performance institutes, including sessions in Austria, Russia, and the United States. He founded and leads Great Lakes Baroque, which advocates for historically-informed performances and greater access to early music, offering Baroque music presentations in and near Milwaukee.

For more information, please visit www.joryvinikour.com.

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THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

Individual Annual Support The Cleveland Orchestra is sustained through the annual support of thousands of generous patrons.

The leadership of those listed on these pages (with gifts of $2,000 and more) shows an extraordinary depth of support for the Orchestra’s music-making, education presentations, and community initiatives.

Giving Societies gifts during the year prior to July 1, 2017 Adella Prentiss Hughes Society

gifts of $50,000 to $99,999

gifts of $100,000 and more Musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra+ (in-kind support for community programs and opportunities to secure new funding) Mr. Richard J. Bogomolny and Ms. Patricia M. Kozerefski+ Dr. and Mrs. Hiroyuki Fujita+ Mr. and Mrs. Michael J. Horvitz+ James D. Ireland IV The Walter and Jean Kalberer Foundation+ Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Kloiber (Europe) Mr. and Mrs. Dennis W. LaBarre+ Mrs. Norma Lerner and The Lerner Foundation+ Mrs. Emma S. Lincoln+ Milton and Tamar Maltz John C. Morley+ Mr. Patrick Park (Miami) Mr. and Mrs. Albert B. Ratner James and Donna Reid Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Smucker+ Mr. and Mrs. Franz Welser-Möst+

With special thanks to the Leadership Patron Committee for their commitment to each year’s annual support initiatives: Barbara Robinson, chair Robert N. Gudbranson, vice chair Ronald H. Bell Iris Harvie James T. Dakin Faye A. Heston Karen E. Dakin Brinton L. Hyde Henry C. Doll David C. Lamb Judy Ernest Larry J. Santon Nicki N. Gudbranson Raymond T. Sawyer Jack Harley

88 72

George Szell Society

Mr. William P. Blair III+ Blossom Friends of The Cleveland Orchestra The Brown and Kunze Foundation Jeanette Grasselli Brown and Glenn R. Brown+ Mr. and Mrs. Alexander M. Cutler+ Mrs. John A Hadden Jr. T. K. and Faye A. Heston Mr. and Mrs. Donald M. Jack, Jr. Elizabeth B. Juliano Giuliana C. and John D. Koch+ Toby Devan Lewis Virginia M. and Jon A. Lindseth Mr. and Mrs. Alex Machaskee+ Ms. Nancy W. McCann+ Ms. Beth E. Mooney+ Rosanne and Gary Oatey (Cleveland, Miami)+ The Honorable and Mrs. John Doyle Ong+ Mr. and Mrs. Alfred M. Rankin, Jr. Mrs. Alfred M. Rankin, Sr. Charles and Ilana Horowitz Ratner+ Barbara S. Robinson (Cleveland, Miami)+ Sally and Larry Sears+ Mary M. Spencer (Miami)+ Mrs. Jean H. Taber* Barbara and David Wolfort (Cleveland, Miami)+

+ Multiyear Pledges Multiyear pledges support the Orchestra’s artistry while helping to ensure a sustained level of funding. We salute those extraordinary donors who have signed pledge commitments to continue their annual giving for three years or more. These donors are recognized with this symbol next to their name: +

Individual Annual Annual Support Individual

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Elisabeth DeWitt Severance Society

Dudley S. Blossom Society gifts of $15,000 to $24,999

gifts of $25,000 to $49,999 Dr. and Mrs. Wolfgang Berndt (Europe) Mr. and Mrs. William W. Baker Dr. and Mrs. Wolfgang Berndt (Europe) Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Bolton+ Mr. Yuval Brisker Mary Alice Cannon Mr. and Mrs. David J. Carpenter+ Jill and Paul Clark Robert and Jean* Conrad+ Judith and George W. Diehl George* and Becky Dunn Friends of The Cleveland Orchestra (formerly the Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Committee of The Cleveland Orchestra) JoAnn and Robert Glick+ Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Gund Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Healy+ Mary and Jon Heider (Cleveland, Miami) Mrs. Marguerite B. Humphrey+ Junior Committee of The Cleveland Orchestra Mr. and Mrs. Joseph P. Keithley Mr. and Mrs. Douglas A. Kern Milton A. and Charlotte R. Kramer Charitable Foundation Margaret Fulton-Mueller+ Mrs. Jane B. Nord William J. and Katherine T. Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Neill Julia and Larry Pollock+ Mr. and Mrs. James A. Ratner Marc and Rennie Saltzberg Larry J. Santon and Lorraine S. Szabo+ The Ralph and Luci Schey Foundation+ Hewitt and Paula Shaw Richard and Nancy Sneed+ Jim and Myrna Spira R. Thomas and Meg Harris Stanton+ Ms. Ginger Warner (Cleveland, Miami) Anonymous (2)

Listings of all donors of $300 and more each year are published annually, and can be viewed online at CLEVELANDORCHESTRA . COM

Gay Cull Addicott+ Randall and Virginia Barbato Dr. Christopher P. Brandt and Dr. Beth Sersig+ Dr. Ben H. and Julia Brouhard Irad and Rebecca Carmi Mr. and Mrs. William E. Conway Mrs. Barbara Cook Mary Jo Eaton (Miami) Dr. and Mrs. Robert Ehrlich (Europe) Mr. Allen H. Ford Ms. Dawn M. Full Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. Gillespie Richard and Ann Gridley+ Robert K. Gudbranson and Joon-Li Kim+ Kathleen E. Hancock Sondra and Steve Hardis Jack Harley and Judy Ernest David and Nancy Hooker+ Joan and Leonard Horvitz Richard and Erica Horvitz (Cleveland, Miami) Allan V. Johnson Jonathan and Tina Kislak (Miami) Mr. Jeff Litwiller+ Mr. and Mrs. Thomas B. McGowan Mr. Thomas F. McKee Mr. and Mrs. Stanley A. Meisel The Miller Family+ Sydell Miller Lauren and Steve Spilman Stacie and Jeff Halpern Edith and Ted* Miller+ Mr. Donald W. Morrison+ Dr. Anne and Mr. Peter Neff Mr. and Mrs. James A. Saks Rachel R. Schneider+ Mrs. David Seidenfeld+ Kim Sherwin+ William* and Marjorie B. Shorrock+ Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Umdasch (Europe) Tom and Shirley Waltermire+ Mr. and Mrs. Fred A. Watkins+ Mr. and Mrs. Jeffery J. Weaver Meredith and Michael Weil Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey M. Weiss Paul and Suzanne Westlake listings continue

Severance Hall 2017-18

Individual Annual Support

73

Frank H. Ginn Society gifts of $10,000 to $14,999 Mr. and Mrs. Dean Barry Laurel Blossom Irma and Norman Braman (Miami)+ Mr. D. McGregor Brandt, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Brown J. C. and Helen Rankin Butler+ Richard J. and Joanne Clark Mrs. Barbara Ann Davis+ Dr. M. Meredith Dobyns Henry and Mary* Doll+ Nancy and Richard Dotson+ Mr. and Mrs. Robert P. Duvin Dr. and Mrs. Lloyd H. Ellis Jr. Mr. Brian L. Ewart and Mr. William McHenry Carl Falb+ Bob and Linnet Fritz Albert I. and Norma C. Geller Dr. Edward S. Godleski Patti Gordon (Miami) Amy and Stephen Hoffman

Thomas H. and Virginia J.* Horner Fund+ James and Claudia Hower Mrs. Elizabeth R. Koch Stewart and Donna Kohl Dr. David and Janice Leshner Don H. McClung Joy P. and Thomas G. Murdough, Jr. (Miami)+ Brian and Cindy Murphy+ Mr. Raymond M. Murphy+ Mr. J. William and Dr. Suzanne Palmer Douglas and Noreen Powers Audra* and George Rose+ Paul A. and Anastacia L. Rose Steven and Ellen Ross Mr. and Mrs. David A. Ruckman Dr. Isobel Rutherford Dr. and Mrs.* Martin I. Saltzman+ David M. and Betty Schneider Carol* and Albert Schupp Mr. and Mrs. Oliver E. Seikel

Seven Five Fund Mrs. Gretchen D. Smith+ The Stair Family Charitable Foundation, Inc. Lois and Tom Stauffer Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan M. Steingass Bruce and Virginia Taylor+ Mr. Joseph F. Tetlak Rick, Margarita, and Steven Tonkinson (Miami)+ Gary L. Wasserman and Charles A. Kashner (Miami) Pysht Fund The Denise G. and Norman E. Wells, Jr. Family Foundation+ Robert C. Weppler Sandy and Ted Wiese Sandy Wile and Joanne Avenmarg Tony and Diane Wynshaw-Boris+ Max and Beverly Zupon Anonymous (4)

The 1929 Society gifts of $5,000 to $9,999 Robert and Alyssa Lenhoff-Briggs Dr. and Mrs. D. P. Agamanolis Susan S. Angell Mr. William App William Appert and Christopher Wallace (Miami) Robert and Dalia Baker Fred G. and Mary W. Behm Mr. and Mrs. Jules Belkin Daniel and Trish Bell (Miami) Mr. William Berger Howard Bernick and Judy Bronfman Mr. David Bialosky and Ms. Carolyn Christian+ Suzanne and Jim Blaser Robert and Alyssa Lenhoff-Briggs Dr.* and Mrs. Jerald S. Brodkey Frank and Leslie Buck+ Ms. Maria Cashy+ Drs. Wuu-Shung and Amy Chuang+ Ellen E. & Victor J. Cohn+ Kathleen A. Coleman+ Diane Lynn Collier and Robert J. Gura+ Marjorie Dickard Comella The Sam J. Frankino Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Matthew V. Crawford Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Daugstrup Mr. and Mrs. Thomas S. Davis Pete and Margaret Dobbins+ Carl Dodge Mr. and Mrs. Paul Doman Mary and Oliver* Emerson Dr. D. Roy and Diane A. Ferguson William R. and Karen W. Feth+

74

Joseph Z. and Betty Fleming (Miami) Scott A. Foerster Joan Alice Ford Michael Frank and Patricia A. Snyder Barbara and Peter Galvin Joy E. Garapic Dr. and Mrs. Adi Gazdar Brenda and David Goldberg Mr. and Mrs. Randall J. Gordon+ Angela and Jeffrey Gotthardt Harry and Joyce Graham Mr. Paul Greig AndrĂŠ and Ginette Gremillet Ms. Nancy L. Griffith The Thomas J. and Judith Fay Gruber Charitable Foundation Robert N. and Nicki N. Gudbranson+ David and Robin Gunning Gary Hanson and Barbara Klante Mr. Robert D. Hart Clark Harvey and Holly Selvaggi+ Iris and Tom Harvie+ Henry R. Hatch Robin Hitchcock Hatch Dr. Robert T. Heath and Dr. Elizabeth L. Buchanan+ Janet D. Heil* Anita and William Heller+ Mr. Loren W. Hershey Patrick* and Jean Holden Steve and Mary Hosier Elisabeth Hugh+ David and Dianne Hunt Mr. and Mrs. Brinton L. Hyde

Individual Annual Support

Pamela and Scott Isquick+ Donna L. and Robert H. Jackson Mr. and Mrs. Richard A. Janus Joela Jones and Richard Weiss Andrew and Katherine Kartalis Milton and Donna* Katz Dr. Richard and Roberta Katzman Dr. and Mrs. Richard S. Kaufman Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Kelly Dr. and Mrs. William S. Kiser James and Gay* Kitson+ Mrs. Natalie D. Kittredge Rob and Laura Kochis Tim and Linda Koelz+ Mr. and Mrs.* S. Lee Kohrman Mr. Clayton R. Koppes Mr. James Krohngold+ Mr. and Mrs. Peter A. Kuhn+ Mr. and Mrs. Arthur J. Lafave, Jr. David C. Lamb+ Kenneth M. Lapine and Rose E. Mills+ Anthony T. and Patricia A. Lauria Dr. Edith Lerner Mr. Lawrence B. and Christine H. Levey+ Judith and Morton Q. Levin+ Dr. Stephen B. and Mrs. Lillian S. Levine+ Dr. Alan and Mrs. Joni Lichtin+ Mr. Rudolf and Mrs. Eva Linnebach+ Anne R. and Kenneth E. Love Robert and LaVerne* Lugibihl Elsie and Byron Lutman Ms. Jennifer R. Malkin Mr. and Mrs. Morton L. Mandel

The Cleveland Orchestra

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75

Alan Markowitz M.D. and Cathy Pollard Mr. and Mrs. E. Timothy McDonel James and Virginia Meil Dr. Susan M. Merzweiler Loretta J. Mester and George J. Mailath Claudia Metz and Thomas Woodworth+ Lynn and Mike Miller+ Drs. Terry E. and Sara S. Miller Curt and Sara Moll Ann Jones Morgan+ Mr. John Mueller Lucia S. Nash Georgia and Carlos Noble (Miami)+ Richard and Kathleen Nord Thury Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connor Mr. and Mrs. Peter R. Osenar Mr. Henry Ott-Hansen Mr. Robert S. Perry Nan and Bob Pfeifer+ Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Pogue In memory of Henry Pollak Dr. and Mrs. John N. Posch+ Ms. Rosella Puskas Mr.* and Mrs. Thomas A. Quintrell

Mr. and Mrs. Roger F. Rankin Brian and Patricia Ratner Amy and Ken Rogat Carol Rolf and Steven Adler Dr. and Mrs. Michael Rosenberg (Miami) Dr. and Mrs. Ronald J. Ross Rosskamm Family Trust Robert and Margo Roth+ Dr. and Mrs. Robert C. Ruhl Mrs. Florence Brewster Rutter+ Drs. Michael and Judith Samuels (Miami) Patricia J. Sawvel Raymond T. and Katherine S. Sawyer Linda B. Schneider Dr. and Mrs. James L. Sechler Mr. Eric Sellen and Mr. Ron Seidman Vivian L. Sharp Mr. James E. Simler and Ms. Amy Zhang Naomi G. and Edwin Z. Singer+ The Shari Bierman Singer Family Drs. Charles Kent Smith and Patricia Moore Smith+ Roy Smith Mr. Eugene Smolik

Mr. and Mrs. William E. Spatz+ atz+ George and Mary Stark Mr. and Mrs. Donald W. Strang, rang, Jr. Stroud Family Trust Dr. Elizabeth Swenson+ Robert and Carol Taller+ Mr. and Mrs. Bill Thornton Dr. Russell A. Trusso Robert and Marti Vagi+ Robert A. Valente and Joan A. Morgensten+ Dr. Gregory Videtic and Rev. Christopher McCann Walt and Karen Walburn Dr. Beverly J. Warren Mr. and Mrs. Mark Allen Weigand+ Dr. Edward L. and Mrs. Suzanne Westbrook Tom and Betsy Wheeler Richard Wiedemer, Jr.+ Dr. and Mr. Ann Williams+ Bob and Kat Wollyung Anonymous

James Carpenter 2 seats (In memory of Christina) (Miami) Dr. Victor A. Ceicys Mr. and Mrs. James B. Chaney Dr. Ronald* and Mrs. Sonia Chapnick Mr. Gregory R. Chemnitz Mr. and Mrs. Homer D. W. Chisholm Dr. William and Dottie Clark Drs. John and Mary Clough Drs. Mark Cohen and Miriam Vishny Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Cohen (Miami) Mr. and Mrs. Mark Corrado Douglas S. Cramer / Hubert S. Bush III (Miami) Mr. and Mrs. Manohar Daga+ Karen and Jim Dakin Mrs. Frederick F. Dannemiller Mr. Kamal-Neil Dass and Mrs. Teresa Larsen+ Dr. Eleanor Davidson Mrs. Lois Joan Davis Michael and Amy Diamant Dr. and Mrs. Howard Dickey-White+ Dr. and Mrs. Richard C. Distad Maureen Doerner & Geoffrey White Carolyn J. Buller and William M. Doll Mr. George and Mrs. Beth Downes+ Ms. Mary Lynn Durham Mr. and Mrs. Ronald E. Dziedzicki Mrs. Mary S. Eaton Mr. and Mrs. Bernard H. Eckstein Esther L. and Alfred M. Eich, Jr.+ Erich Eichhorn and Ursel Dougherty Mr. S. Stuart Eilers Peter and Kathryn Eloff+ Harry and Ann Farmer

Mr. William and Dr. Elizabeth Fesler Mr. Paul C. Forsgren Richard J. Frey Mr. and Ms. Dale Freygang Peggy A. Fullmer Ms. Marilee Gallagher Mr. William Gaskill and Ms. Kathleen Burke Mr. Wilbert C. Geiss, Sr. Anne and Walter Ginn Dr.* and Mrs. Victor M. Goldberg Mr. and Mrs. David A. Goldfinger Dr. and Mrs. Ronald L. Gould Dr. Robert T. Graf Nancy F. Green (Miami) Ms. Anna Z. Greenfield Drs. Erik and Ellen Gregorie Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Griebling Dr. and Mrs. Franklin W. Griff Candy and Brent Grover Nancy and James Grunzweig+ Mr. and Mrs. John E. Guinness Mr. Davin and Mrs. Jo Ann Gustafson Dr. Phillip M. and Mrs. Mary Hall Douglas M. and Amy Halsey (Miami) Mr. and Mrs. David P. Handke, Jr. Elaine Harris Green Lilli and Seth Harris Barbara L. Hawley and David S. Goodman Matthew D. Healy and Richard S. Agnes In Memory of Hazel Helgesen Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Herschman The Morton and Mathile Stone Philanthropic Fund Dr. Fred A. Heupler Mr. Robert T. Hexter Dr. and Mrs. Robert L. Hinnes

Composerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Circle gifts of $2,000 to $4,999 Mr. and Mrs. Charles Abookire, Jr. Ms. Nancy A. Adams Mr. and Mrs.* Robert J. Amsdell Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey R. Appelbaum+ Mr. and Mrs. James B. Aronoff+ Art of Beauty Company, Inc. Ms. Patricia Ashton Steven Michael Auvil and Elise Hara Auvil Mr. and Mrs. Eugene J. Beer Dr. Ronald and Diane Bell Drs. Nathan A. and Sosamma J. Berger Mr. Roger G. Berk Barbara and Sheldon Berns Jayusia and Alan Bernstein (Miami) Margo and Tom Bertin John and Laura Bertsch Howard R. and Barbara Kaye Besser Ms. Deborah A. Blades Bill* and Zeda Blau Doug and Barbara Bletcher Georgette and Dick Bohr Mr. and Mrs. Richard H. Bole Irving and Joan M. Bolotin (Miami) Mrs. Loretta Borstein Lisa and Ronald Boyko Mr. and Mrs. David Briggs Mr. and Mrs. Henry G. Brownell Mrs. Frances Buchholzer J. C. Burkhardt Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Busha Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell and Rev. Dr. Albert Pennybacker Dr. and Mrs. William E. Cappaert John and Christine Carleton (Miami) Mrs. Millie L. Carlson+ Mr. and Mrs. Frank H. Carpenter

92 76

Individual Annual Annual Support Individual

The Cleveland Orchestra

Thomas and Mary Holmes Gail Hoover and Bob Safarz+ Dr. Keith A. and Mrs. Kathleen M. Hoover+ Dr. Randal N. Huff and Ms. Paulette Beech+ Ms. Laura Hunsicker Gretchen Hyland and Edward Stephens Jr. Ruth F. Ihde Dr. and Mrs. Scott R. Inkley William W. Jacobs Mr. and Mrs. Bruce D. Jarosz Robert and Linda Jenkins Dr. and Mrs. Donald W. Junglas Barbara and Michael J. Kaplan Mr. Donald J. Katt and Mrs. Maribeth Filipic-Katt Ms. Deborah Kaye The Kendis Family Trust: Hilary & Robert Kendis and Susan & James Kendis Bruce and Eleanor Kendrick Dr. Gilles* and Mrs. Malvina Klopman+ Fred* and Judith Klotzman Cynthia Knight (Miami) Drs. Raymond and Katharine Kolcaba+ Marion Konstantynovich Jacqueline and Irwin* Kott (Miami) Dr. Ronald H. Krasney and Vicki Kennedy+ Mr. Donald N. Krosin Alfred and Carol Lambo Mr. and Mrs. John J. Lane, Jr. + Mrs. Sandra S. Laurenson Dr. and Mrs. Arthur Lavin Michael Lederman Ronald and Barbara Leirvik Mr. and Mrs. Ernest C. Lemmerman Michael and Lois Lemr Irvin and Elin Leonard+ Mr. Alan R. Lepene Robert G. Levy+ Drs. Todd and Susan Locke Mary Lohman Ms. Mary Beth Loud Mrs. Idarose S. Luntz Damond and Lori Mace Ms. Linda Macklin David Mann and Bernadette Pudis Janet A. Mann Herbert L. and Ronda Marcus Martin and Lois Marcus Mr. and Mrs. Raul Marmol (Miami) Dr. and Mrs. Sanford E. Marovitz+ Ms. Dorene Marsh Dr. Ernest and Mrs. Marian Marsolais Mr. Fredrick Martin Ms. Amanda Martinsek Dr. and Mrs. William A. Mast Mr. Julien L. McCall Ms. Charlotte V. McCoy William C. McCoy Mr. and Mrs. Christopher J. McKenna Mr. and Mrs. Tom McLaughlin Ms. Nancy L. Meacham Mr. and Mrs. James E. Menger Mr. and Mrs. Trent Meyerhoefer Ms. Betteann Meyerson+ Beth M. Mikes Abby and Jake Mitchell Mr. and Mrs. William A. Mitchell+

Severance HallOrchestra 2017-18 The Cleveland

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W. Morris Bert and Marjorie Moyar+ Susan B. Murphy Randy and Christine Myeroff Steven and Kimberly Myers+ Ms. Megan Nakashima Joan Katz Napoli and August Napoli Richard B. and Jane E. Nash Deborah L. Neale Robert D. and Janet E. Neary Steve Norris and Emily Gonzales Marshall I. Nurenberg and Joanne Klein Richard and Jolene Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Callaghan Mr. and Mrs. John Olejko Dr. and Mrs. Paul T. Omelsky Mr. Robert Paddock Mr. John D. Papp George Parras+ Dr. Lewis E. and Janice B. Patterson David Pavlich and Cherie Arnold Matt and Shari Peart Dr. and Mrs. Gosta Pettersson Henry Peyrebrune and Tracy Rowell Dr. Roland S. Philip and Dr. Linda M. Sandhaus+ Dale and Susan Phillip Maribel A. Piza (Miami)+ Mr. Carl Podwoski Dr. Marc A. and Mrs. Carol Pohl Brad Pohlman and Julie Callsen Mr. Robert and Mrs. Susan Price Ms. Sylvia Profenna Mr. Lute and Mrs. Lynn Quintrell Drs. Raymond R. Rackley and Carmen M. Fonseca+ Ms. C. A. Reagan Dr. Robert W. Reynolds Ms. Janet Rice David and Gloria Richards Ms. Carole Ann Rieck Mrs. Charles Ritchie Joan and Rick Rivitz Mr. D. Keith and Mrs. Margaret Robinson Mr. Timothy D. Robson+ Ms. Linda M. Rocchi Dick A. and Debbie Rose Mr. Kevin Russell (Miami) Mrs. Elisa J. Russo+ Fred Rzepka and Anne Rzepka Family Foundation Dr. Harry S. and Rita K. Rzepka+ Dr. Vernon E. Sackman and Ms. Marguerite Patton+ Fr. Robert J. Sanson Ms. Patricia E. Say+ Mr. Paul H. Scarbrough+ Robert Scarr and Margaret Widmar Bob Scheuer Don Schmitt and Jim Harmon Mr. James Schutte+ Mr. and Mrs. Alexander C. Scovil Dr. John Sedor and Ms. Geralyn Presti Ms. Kathryn Seider Charles Seitz (Miami) Drs. Daniel and Ximena Sessler+ Mr. Kenneth and Mrs. Jill Shafer Donna E. Shalala (Miami) Ginger and Larry Shane

Individual Annual Annual Support Support Individual

Harry and Ilene Shapiro Ms. Frances L. Sharp Larry Oscar and Jeanne Shatten+ Dr. and Mrs. William C. Sheldon+ Terrence and Judith Sheridan Mr. Richard Shirey+ Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Shiverick+ Michael Dylan Short Mr. Robert Sieck Laura and Alvin A. Siegal Howard and Beth Simon Ms. Ellen J. Skinner Ms. Anna D. Smith Ms. Janice A. Smith Sandra and Richey Smith+ Mr. and Mrs.* Jeffrey H. Smythe Mrs. Virginia Snapp Ms. Barbara Snyder Mr. Marc Stadiem Ms. Sharon Stahler Dr.* and Mrs. Frank J. Staub Mr. Alan L. Steffen Mr. Eduardo Stern (Miami) Frederick and Elizabeth Stueber Mr. Taras G. Szmagala, Jr. Kathy* and Sidney Taurel (Miami)+ Dr. and Mrs. Thomas A. Timko Mr.* and Mrs. Robert N. Trombly Steve and Christa Turnbull+ Mrs. H. Lansing Vail, Jr. Bobbi and Peter van Dijk Mrs. Stasia M. Vavruska Brenton Ver Ploeg (Miami) Teresa Galang-ViĂąas and Joaquin Vinas (Miami) Mr. and Mrs. Les C. Vinney George and Barbara von Mehren Mr. Norman Wain Ms. Laure A. Wasserbauer+ Margaret and Eric* Wayne+ Alice & Leslie T. Webster, Jr. Mr. Peter and Mrs. Laurie Weinberger Michael and Danielle Weiner Dr. Paul R. and Catherine Williams Ms. Claire Wills Richard and Mary Lynn Wills Elizabeth B. Wright+ William Ronald and Lois YaDeau Rad and Patty Yates Ken and Paula Zeisler Dr. William Zelei Mr. Kal Zucker and Dr. Mary Frances Haerr Anonymous (3)+ Anonymous (8)

+ has signed a multiyear pledge (see information box earlier in this section)

* deceased

Thank You 77 93

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

Corporate Support The Cleveland Orchestra extends heartfelt gratitude and partnership with the corporations listed on this page, whose annual support (through gifts of $2,500 and more) demonstrates their belief in the Orchestra’s music-making, education initiatives, and community presentations.

Annual Support gifts during the year prior to July 1, 2017 The Partners in Excellence program salutes companies with annual contributions of $100,000 and more, exemplifying leadership and commitment to musical excellence at the highest level.

PARTNERS IN EXCELLENCE $300,000 AND MORE

Hyster-Yale Materials Handling NACCO Industries, Inc. KeyBank The J. M. Smucker Company PARTNERS IN EXCELLENCE $200,000 TO $299,999

BakerHostetler Eaton Jones Day PNC Bank Raiffeisenlandesbank Oberösterreich (Europe) PARTNERS IN EXCELLENCE $100,000 TO $199,999

American Greetings Corporation Medical Mutual Nordson Corporation Foundation Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP Thompson Hine LLP

The Cleveland Severance HallOrchestra 2017-18

$50,000 TO $99,999

DLR Group | Westlake Reed Leskosky Dollar Bank Foundation Forest City Litigation Management, Inc. Parker Hannifin Foundation Quality Electrodynamics (QED) Anonymous $15,000 TO $49,999

Buyers Products Company Case Western Reserve University Ernst & Young LLP Frantz Ward LLP The Giant Eagle Foundation Great Lakes Brewing Company Hahn Loeser & Parks LLP The Lincoln Electric Foundation The Lubrizol Corporation Materion Corporation MTD Products, Inc. North Coast Container Corp.

Ohio Savings Bank, A Division of New York Community Bank Olympic Steel, Inc. RPM International Inc. The Sherwin-Williams Company Tucker Ellis LLP

Corporate Corporate Annual Annual Support Support

$2,500 TO $14,999 Akron Tool & Die Company American Fireworks, Inc. BDI BestLight LED Brothers Printing Co., Inc. Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP Cleveland Clinic Cleveland Steel Container Corporation The Cleveland Wire Cloth & Mfg. Co. Cohen & Company, CPAs Community Counselling Services Consolidated Solutions Cozen O’Connor (Miami) Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation Evarts Tremaine The Ewart-Ohlson Machine Company Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Glenmede Adam Foslid/Greenberg Traurig (Miami) Gross Builders Huntington National Bank Littler Mendelson, P.C. Live Publishing Company Macy’s Miba AG (Europe) Northern Haserot Oatey Ohio CAT OMNOVA Solutions Oswald Companies Park-Ohio Holdings PolyOne Corporation RSM US, LLP Southern Wine and Spirits (Miami) Stern Advertising Struktol Company of America University Hospitals Ver Ploeg & Lumpkin (Miami) Anonymous (2)

87 79

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THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

Foundation/Government Support The Cleveland Orchestra is grateful for the annual support of the foundations and government agencies listed on this page. The generous funding from these institutions (through gifts of $2,500 and more) is a testament of support for the Orchestra’s music-making, education initiatives, and community presentations.

Annual Support gifts during the year prior to July 1, 2017 $1 MILLION AND MORE

The Cleveland Foundation Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture $500,000 TO $999,999

The George Gund Foundation Ohio Arts Council $250,000 TO $499,999

Kulas Foundation John P. Murphy Foundation $100,000 TO $249,999

Paul M. Angell Family Foundation Elizabeth Ring Mather and William Gwinn Mather Fund David and Inez Myers Foundation The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation $50,000 TO $99,999

The George W. Codrington Charitable Foundation GAR Foundation The Gerhard Foundation, Inc. Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation Martha Holden Jennings Foundation Myra Tuteur Kahn Memorial Fund of The Cleveland Foundation Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs (Miami) The Frederick and Julia Nonneman Foundation The Nord Family Foundation The Payne Fund

The Cleveland Severance HallOrchestra 2017-18

$15,000 TO $49,999

The Abington Foundation The Batchelor Foundation, Inc. (Miami) Mary E. & F. Joseph Callahan Foundation The Helen C. Cole Charitable Trust The Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Mary and Dr. George L. Demetros Charitable Trust The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation The Helen Wade Greene Charitable Trust National Endowment for the Arts Sandor Foundation Albert G. & Olive H. Schlink Foundation Jean C. Schroeder Foundation The Sisler McFawn Foundation Dr. Kenneth F. Swanson Fund for the Arts of Akron Community Foundation The Veale Foundation The Edward and Ruth Wilkof Foundation

$2,500 TO $14,999 The Ruth and Elmer Babin Foundation Dr. NE & JZ Berman Foundation The Bernheimer Family Fund of the Cleveland Foundation Eva L. and Joseph M. Bruening Foundation Cleveland State University Foundation The Cowles Charitable Trust (Miami) Elisha-Bolton Foundation The Harry K. Fox and Emma R. Fox Charitable Foundation The Jean, Harry and Brenda Fuchs Family Foundation, in memory of Harry Fuchs The Hankins Foundation The Muna & Basem Hishmeh Foundation Richard H. Holzer Memorial Foundation The Laub Foundation Victor C. Laughlin, M.D. Memorial Foundation Trust The Lehner Family Foundation The G. R. Lincoln Family Foundation The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation The Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation The M. G. O’Neil Foundation Paintstone Foundation Charles E. & Mabel M. Ritchie Memorial Foundation The Leighton A. Rosenthal Family Foundation SCH Foundation Miami-Dade County Public Schools (Miami) Harold C. Schott Foundation Kenneth W. Scott Foundation Lloyd L. and Louise K. Smith Memorial Foundation The South Waite Foundation The O’Neill Brothers Foundation The George Garretson Wade Charitable Trust The S. K. Wellman Foundation The Welty Family Foundation Thomas H. White Foundation, a KeyBank Trust The Wuliger Foundation Anonymous (2)

Foundation/Government Annual Foundation/Government Annual Support Support

85 81

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the world’s most beautiful concert halls, Severance Hall has been home to The Cleveland Orchestra since its opening on February 5, 1931. After that first concert, a Cleveland newspaper editorial stated: “We believe that Mr. Severance intended to build a temple to music, and not a temple to wealth; and we believe it is his intention that all music lovers should be welcome there.” John Long Severance (president of the Musical Arts Association, 1921-1936) and his wife, Elisabeth, donated most of the funds necessary to erect this magnificent building. Designed by Walker & Weeks, its elegant HAILED AS ONE OF

Severance Hall 2017-18

Severance Hall

Georgian exterior was constructed to harmonize with the classical architecture of other prominent buildings in the University Circle area. The interior of the building reflects a combination of design styles, including Art Deco, Egyptian Revival, Classicism, and Modernism.

An extensive renovation, restoration, and expansion of the facility was completed in January 2000. In addition to serving as the home of The Cleveland Orchestra for concerts and rehearsals, the building is rented by a wide variety of local organizations and private citizens for performances, meetings, and special events each year.

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The Cleveland Orchestra

11001 Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44106 CLEVELANDORCHESTRA.COM

AT SE V E R A N C E H A LL RESTAURANT AND CONCESSION SERVICE Pre-Concert Dining: Severance Restaurant at Severance Hall is open for pre-concert dining for evening and Sunday afternoon performances (and for lunch following Friday Morning Concerts). For reservations, call 216-231-7373, or online by visiting www.UseRESO.com.

Intermission & Pre-Concert: Concession service of beverages and light refreshments is available before most concerts and at intermissions at a variety of lobby locations.

Post-Concert Dining: Severance Restaurant is open after most evening concerts with à la carte dining, desserts, full bar service, and coffee. For Friday Morning Concerts, a post-concert luncheon service is offered.

OPUS CAFÉ The new Opus Café is located on the ground floor in the Lerner Lobby at the top of the escalator CAFE from the parking garage. Offering pre- and post-concert refreshments and light foods, the Café is a perfect spot for meeting and talking with friends.

opus

and conferences, pre- or post-concert dinners and receptions, weddings, and social events. Catering provided by Marigold Catering. Premium dates are available. Call the Facility Sales Office at 216-2317420 or email to hallrental@clevelandorchestra.com

BE FO R E T H E CO NC E R T GARAGE PARKING AND PATRON ACCESS Pre-paid parking for the Campus Center Garage can be purchased in advance through the Ticket Office for $15 per concert. This pre-paid parking ensures you a parking space, but availability of prepaid parking passes is limited. To order pre-paid parking, call the Ticket Office at 216-231-1111.

Parking can be purchased (cash only) for the at-door price of $11 per vehicle when space in the Campus Center Garage permits. However, the garage often fills up and only ticket holders with prepaid parking passes are ensured a parking space.

Parking is also available in several lots within 1-2 blocks of Severance Hall. Visit the Orchestra’s website for more information and details.

FRIDAY MATINEE PARKING

If you have any questions, please ask an usher or a staff member, or call 216-231-7300 during regular weekday business hours, or email to info@clevelandorchestra.com.

Due to limited parking availability for Friday Matinee performances, patrons are strongly encouraged to take advantage of these convenient off-site parking and round-trip bus options: Shuttle bus service from Cleveland Heights is available from the parking lot at Cedar Hill Baptist Church (12601 Cedar Road). The roundtrip service rate is $5 per person.

Suburban round-trip bus transportation is available from four locations: Beachwood Place, Crocker Park, Brecksville, and Akron’s Summit Mall.

The round-trip service rate is $15 per person per concert, and is provided with support from the Friends of The Cleveland Orchestra.

RENTAL OPPORTUNITIES

CONCERT PREVIEWS

Severance Hall, a Cleveland landmark and home of the world-renowned Cleveland Orchestra, is the perfect location for business meetings

Concert Preview talks and presentations begin one hour prior to most regular Cleveland Orchestra concerts at Severance Hall.

ATM — Automated Teller Machine For our patrons’ convenience, an ATM is located in the Lerner Lobby of Severance Hall, across from Opus Café on the ground floor.

QUESTIONS

Severance Hall 2017-18

Guest Information

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AT T H E CO NC E R T

comfort and listening pleasure of the audience, late-arriving patrons will not be seated while music is being performed. Latecomers are asked to wait quietly until the first break in the program, when ushers will assist them to their seats. Please note that performances without intermission may not have a seating break. These arrangements are at the discretion of the House Manager in consultation with the conductor and performing artists.

COAT CHECK Complimentary coat check is available for concertgoers. The main coat check is located on the street level midway along each gallery on the ground floor.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND SELFIES, VIDEO AND AUDIO RECORDING Photographs of the hall and selfies to share with others can be taken when the performance is not in progress. However, audio recording, photography, and videography are prohibited during performances. As courtesy to others, please turn off any phone or device that makes noise or emits light.

SERVICES FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES Severance Hall provides special seating options for mobility-impaired persons and their companions and families. There are wheelchair- and scooter-accessible locations where patrons can remain in their wheelchairs or transfer to a concert seat. Aisle seats with removable armrests are also available for persons who wish to transfer. Tickets for wheelchair accessible and companion seating can be purchased by phone, in person, or online.

As a courtesy, Severance Hall provides wheelchairs to assist patrons in going to and from their seats. Patrons can make arrangement by calling the House Manager in advance at 216-231-7425.

Infrared Assistive Listening Devices are available from a Head Usher or the House Manager for most performances. If you need assistance, please

REMINDERS Please disarm electronic watch alarms and turn off all pagers, cell phones, and mechanical devices before entering the concert hall. Patrons with hearing aids are asked to be attentive to the sound level of their hearing devices and adjust them accordingly. To ensure the listening pleasure of all patrons, please note that anyone creating a disturbance may be asked to leave the concert hall.

LATE SEATING Performances at Severance Hall start at the time designated on the ticket. In deference to the

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Guest Information

The Cleveland Orchestra

contact the House Manager at 216-231-7425 in advance if possible.

Service animals are welcome at Severance Hall.

Please notify the Ticket Office as you buy tickets.

IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY Emergency exits are clearly marked throughout the building. Ushers and house staff will provide instructions in the event of an emergency.

Contact an usher or a member of the house staff if you require medical assistance.

SECURITY For security reasons, backpacks, musical instrument cases, and large bags are prohibited in the concert halls. These items must be checked at coat check and may be subject to search.

Severance Hall is a firearms-free facility. No person may possess a firearm on the premises.

CHILDREN AND FAMILIES Regardless of age, each person must have a ticket and be able to sit quietly in a seat throughout the performance. Cleveland Orchestra subscription concerts are not recommended for children under the age of 8. However, there are several age-appropriate series designed specifically for children and youth, including: Musical Rainbows (recommended for children 3 to 6 years old) and Family Concerts (for ages 7 and older).

Our Under 18s Free ticket program is designed to encourage families to attend together. For more details, visit clevelandorchestra.com/ under18.

T IC K E T SE RV IC ES TICKET EXCHANGES Subscribers unable to attend on a particular concert date can exchange their tickets for a different performance of the same week’s program.

Subscribers may exchange their subscription tickets for another subscription program up to five days prior to a performance. There is no service charge for the five-day advance ticket exchanges. If a ticket exchange is requested within 5 days of the performance, a $10 service charge per concert applies. Visit clevelandorchestra.com for details.

UNABLE TO USE YOUR TICKETS? Ticket holders unable to use or exchange their tickets are encouraged to notify the Ticket Office so that those tickets can be resold. Because of the demand for tickets to Cleveland Orchestra performances, “turnbacks” make seats available to other music lovers and can provide additional income to the Orchestra. If you return your tickets at least two hours before the concert, the value of each ticket can be a tax-deductible contribution. Patrons who turn back tickets receive a cumulative donation acknowledgement at the end of each calendar year.

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Severance Hall 2017-18

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THE CLEVELAND C O N C E R T

C A L E N D A R

SPRING CONCERTS Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony

John Williams

Mar 15 — Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

Mar 16 — Friday at 11:00 a.m. <18s * Mar 17 — Saturday at 8:00 p.m.

Mar 18 — Sunday at 3:00 p.m. <18s

Apr 8 — Sunday at 7:00 p.m.

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA Alan Gilbert, conductor Alisa Weilerstein, cello

DVOŘÁK The Watersprite * BARBER Cello Concerto DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 8 * Not performed on Friday morning concert Sponsor: Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP Forest City

Romantic Rachmaninoff

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA John Williams, conductor America’s most revered and beloved composer for film, John Williams, joins The Cleveland Orchestra for a onenight-only concert featuring his legendary film scores.

Please note that this concert is SOLD OUT.

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony Apr 12 — Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA Franz Welser-Möst, conductor

BEETHOVEN Overture: Coriolan BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 8 BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5

Mar 22 — Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

Mar 23 — Friday at 7:00 p.m. <18s Mar 24 — Saturday at 8:00 p.m.

Mar 25 — Sunday at 3:00 p.m. <18s

Beethoven and Wagner

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA Stéphane Denève, conductor Jory Vinikour, harpsichord

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA Franz Welser-Möst, conductor

Sponsor: Tucker Ellis LLP

Apr 13 — Friday at 11:00 a.m.

<18s

POULENC Pastoral Concerto (for harpsichord and orchestra)* RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 2

WAGNER Prelude and Love-Death from Tristan and Isolde BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”)

* Not performed on Friday concert

Sponsor: BakerHostetler

Sponsor: PNC Bank KeyBank (Fridays@7)

Brahms Violin Concerto Apr 5 — Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

Apr 7 — Saturday at 8:00 p.m.

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA Jakub Hrůša, conductor Sergey Khachatryan, violin

BRAHMS Violin Concerto SUK Symphony No. 2 (“Asrael”) Sponsor: BakerHostetler

For a complete schedule of future events and performances, or to purchase tickets online 24/ 7 for Cleveland Orchestra concerts, visit www.clevelandorchestra.com.

PNC Musical Rainbow

The Fabulous Flute Apr 20 — Friday at 10:00 a.m. <18s Apr 21 — Saturday at 11:00 a.m. <18s with Marisela Sager, flute

For ages 3 to 6, introducing instruments of the orchestra.

With solo selections, kid-friendly tunes, and sing-alongs.

Sponsor: PNC Bank

Festival: The Ecstasy of Tristan & Isolde

Tristan and Isolde

Apr 21 — Saturday at 6:00 p.m.

Apr 26 — Thursday at 6:00 p.m.

Apr 29 — Sunday at 3:00 p.m. <18s THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA Franz Welser-Möst, conductor The 19th century’s Romantic Era reached its zenith in Wagner’s emotionally-charged opera of love and death, Tristan and Isolde. This powerful music of unending longing — and unresolved harmony — launched music into the modern era. Sung in German with English supertitles.

Sponsor: Jones Day

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Concert Calendar

The Cleveland Orchestra

ORCHESTRA Festival: The Ecstasy of Tristan & Isolde

2O1 7-18 CENTENNIAL SEASON

I N

T H E

S P O T L I G H T

Turangalîla Symphonie

Apr 25 — Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.

<18s

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA Franz Welser-Möst, conductor Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano Cynthia Millar, ondes martenot

MESSIAEN Turangalîla-Symphonie Sponsor: Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP

Festival: The Ecstasy of Tristan & Isolde

Divine Ecstasy

Apr 28 — Saturday at 8:00 p.m.

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA Franz Welser-Möst, conductor Vinay Parameswaran, conductor Lisa Wong, conductor Iestyn Davies, countertenor Paul Jacobs, organ Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and Chamber Chorus An evening of works exploring musical, religious, and mystical ecstasy — and their interrelationship with human meditation, transcendence, and understanding. Musical works by Bach, Gabrieli, Liszt, Pärt, and Kernis.

PNC Musical Rainbow

Powerful Percussion May 4 — Friday at 10:00 a.m. <18s May 5 — Saturday at 11:00 a.m. <18s

with Thomas Sherwood, percussion For ages 3 to 6, introducing instruments of the orchestra.

With solo selections, kid-friendly tunes, and sing-alongs.

Sponsor: PNC Bank

Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra May 5 — Saturday at 8:00 p.m.

<18s

CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA YOUTH ORCHESTRA Vinay Parameswaran, conductor Charlie Jones, trumpet Ohio’s premier instrumental youth ensembles presents their spring concert at Severance Hall, featuring works by Beethoven, Lutoslawski, Haydn, and Danielpour.

Prelude Concert begins at 7 p.m. with Youth Orchestra and members performing chamber music.

Under 18s Free FOR FAMILIES

<18s

Concerts with this symbol are eligible for "Under 18s Free" ticketing. Our "Under 18s Free" program offers free tickets for young people attending with families (one per full-price adult for concerts marked with the symbol above).

Severance Hall 2017-18

Concert Calendar

Nina Stemme

Tristan & Isolde April 21 — Saturday at 6:00 p.m.

April 26 — Thursday at 6:00 p.m.

April 29 — Sunday at 3:00 p.m.

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA Franz Welser-Möst, conductor featuring Gerhard Siegel, tenor Nina Stemme, soprano Okka von der Damerau, mezzo-soprano Ain Anger, bass Alan Held, baritone The 19th century’s Romantic Era reached its zenith in Wagner’s emotionally-charged grand opera of love and death, Tristan and Isolde. This powerful music of unending longing — and unresolved harmony — launched music into the modern era.

Opera-in-concert presentation, sung in German with projected English supertitles.

Sponsor: Jones Day

CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA TICKETS PHONE

216 - 231-1111 800-686-1141

clevelandorchestra.com

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“Wonderfully vivacious and gripping…”

– SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

MONTEVERDI’S

L’Or feo ORPHEUS IN

THE Semi-staged Production

UNDERWORLD

The ancient myth of the singer Orpheus, who storms the gates of hell to rescue his beloved, still rings true today. Monteverdi’s L’ORFEO was the groundbreaking operatic achievement of the 17th century. It receives impassioned treatment by Jeannette Sorrell and her hand-picked company of artists and dancers in this semi-staged production. Projected English supertitles.

APRIL 13 -14, 8:00PM CLEVELAND Institute of Music Karim Sulayman Orfeo

APRIL 18, 8:00PM St. Raphael Catholic Church, BAY VILLAGE

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What Music expresses is eternal, infinite, and ideal. Music expresses not the passion, love, desire, of this or that individual in this or that condition, but Passion, Love, Desire itself.

—Richard Wagner

The Ecstasy of Tristan and Isolde FRANZ WELSER-MÖST discusses Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, and the ideas of ecstasy and transcendence that he explores with the opera and as part of a concert series April 21-29

Q&A Q: Tell us about Tristan and Isolde.

Franz: Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde is, without any question, one of the most important musical milestones in history.

And for many different reasons, musically and even philosophically. At one and the same time, it represents the ultimate high point of musical Romanticism and the launch of modern music. In this score, Wagner broke apart the harmonic tonal system to reveal something new. With this opera, Wagner unleashed music from the past and announced the start of our Severance Hall 2017-18

modern world.

I have long wanted to program this opera with The Cleveland Orchestra — to have the right singers and the right season to include this extraordinary work. With the remarkable soprano Nina Stemme, who we hosted several years ago here at Severance Hall and at Carnegie Hall as Salome, we have the world’s greatest living Isolde.

Fundamentally, for the orchestra and for the Cleveland audience, I believe that part of being a great orchestra includes playing and experiencing certain pieces.

Tristan and Isolde is one of these. The experience of performing it — and of hearing it as an audience member — changes your understanding of what music can be.

It is perfect for the Orchestra’s Centennial season, as we explore how music literally

Exploring Musical Ecstasy: April 21-29

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makes history and at the same time leaves the past behind, taking us into the future.

Let me add to this the fact that Tristan and Isolde is very challenging and difficult to perform. The original production in Munich in 1865 had 142 rehearsals, just to learn this music and get it right. It is a demanding work, but also very rewarding. Audiences will come away having truly experienced a pinnacle in music — almost like climbing Mount Everest in sound. It is breathtaking, perhaps literally, in the “high” feeling, the magnificent feelings that it offers.

Q: Isn’t this opera just a story of star-crossed lovers, who both die in the end?

Franz: Many operas end in death and tragedy. That doesn’t mean they aren’t inspiring and filled with insight and understanding. Great works help us understand what it means to be human, to feel, to learn, to grow. Wagner’s genius in Tristan and Isolde is in creating a musical language of desire, of unending longing.

The music does not rest, the harmonic key does not find resolution. Even at the very end, when the opera stops, the music is still unfinished harmonically — continuing on forever. It is thrilling to experience.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said that Wagner’s music is like a drug.

And he was right. The characters want more, you want more. And you hold on for every phrase, looking for resolution.

In a way, Wagner portrays an emotional addiction, a desire that cannot be satisfied except through understanding. In the opera, love is caused by a special or magic potion. But it is really just something that allows two people to admit their feelings,

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their attraction for one another. And it is much more than physical, it is a mental state of being whole — of ecstasy and transcendence, of finding meaning and understanding in life.

Q: You described the “ecstasy” in this opera.

How did you expand that idea to create a festival with additional concerts?

Franz: Tristan and Isolde, as I have said, is an ecstatic piece. In the ending, in Isolde’s “Love-Death” or Liebestod, this woman transcends her own existence, and finds a deep understanding, of love and life, in death. For some people, ecstasy may be easier to understand through the word “transcendence.” Both words have meanings beyond the usual — of “being outside yourself” in ecstasy, or of becoming “more than” or transcending “beyond” the

normal. In planning the season, and with Tristan and Isolde already on the calendar, I kept coming back to this idea.

I became excited at thinking about how much other music there is that touches around these ideas, of religious ecstasy, becoming one with god, of personal ecstasy, of being enlightened, of meditation and centering oneself inside. I think for many people, musical performances are often a channel to understanding and transcendence, of being more than yourself and at peace. And so I worked to develop a festival around the opera.

April 21-29: Exploring Musical Ecstasy

The Cleveland Orchestra

Think back to some of the great music, the great performances you have experienced, and that moment at the end, when there is silence, not even breathing, as the audience and the musicians think not about themselves but simply take in what has been witnessed and shared.

That is transcendence — in leaving or forgetting the place where you are physically, for a moment, and of being part of something greater. Ecstasy — whether it is spiritual, or physical, or musical — is

The legend of Tristan and Isolde is the symbol of all great loves and for all the great love poems in literature or in music. . . . It transcends even the limitations of the mind, and grows to a cosmic scale.

—Olivier Messiaen

the experience of letting go and uniting together all at that same time. This is what we are exploring in these musical performances in April. I believe it will be an unforgettable experience to hear these works, separately and together.

Adding to Tristan and Isolde, which opens the festival, we have a performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie from 1949. This is all about ec-

static love, even physical love, and directly touches on and re-examines the story of Tristan and Isolde, but in a very different kind of musical language. It is “new age” or modern, mixing instruments and sounds from different times and cultures, with many percussionists and solo piano and the ondes martenot, an early electronic instrument. Much of this music is hypnotic, and it is pre-minimalist and mesmerizing. There is a slow movement, which portrays Tristan and Isolde’s love as a garden of delight and ecstatic, calming embrace, and in a different movement Messiaen portrays stars dancing in the celestial heavens.

The second concert centers on religious or spiritual ecstasy, and perhaps touching toward mysticism. Here we are featuring, of course, some music by Bach, and music by an earlier composer, Giovanni Gabrieli. But also more modern works, including Arvo Pärt’s Magnificat. And a piece of organ music by Franz Liszt, who was so often trying new things and workk ing to expand the language of music.

For this Divine Ecstasyy concert in particular, we explore music written specifically around religious ecstasy, of music that was written to extend and amplify spiritual or meditative feelings — of music as a means to lose yourself, and to find your way.

The ECSTASY of TRISTAN AND ISOLDE 2O1 7-18 CENTENNIAL SEASON

Severance verance Hall 2017 2017-18 18

This unique Festival April 21-29 features in-concert performances of Rich Ri char ard d Wa Wagn gner er’ss ope pera ra Tr Tris ista tan n an and d Is Isol olde de (A (Apr prilil 21, 26, and 29) 9), along g with Olivier Messiaen’s Turang galîla Sy ymp phonie (A ( pr p il 25)), and d a program tiitlled d Divine i Ecstasy (A (Aprilil 28),) plus l a sh howing i off the 2011 film Melancholia (April 22) at Cleveland Cinematheque.

Exploring Musical Ecstasy: April 21-29

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