Sam Jacobson is a software engineer with a musicology degree,
currently in Cleveland after having previously spent several years in
Chicago. In addition to writing for Bachtrack, he also maintains a
blog which can be read here.
In one of their final performances, the Emerson String Quartet comes to Cleveland to present André Previn’s Penelope, featuring Renée Fleming and other special guests.
The Cleveland Orchestra offers a compelling take on Maher’s variegated and enigmatic Seventh Symphony, while Sir Simon Keenlyside prefaces with a fine selection of Lieder.
Riccardo Muti selects Beethoven’s daunting Missa solemnis for his final performance as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony, a performance that proves worthy of his remarkable tenure.
At the Minnesota Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis contrasts works of Beethoven with Berg’s Violin Concerto and a piece the draws on traditional Chinese folk dance.
Alisa Weilerstein is a powerful soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra in Barber’s Cello Concerto, while a new work by Allison Loggins-Hull and a rarely-heard Prokofiev symphony are intriguing but less convincing.
Michael Tilson Thomas couples Mahler and Debussy at The Cleveland Orchestra, close contemporaries but worlds apart stylistically. Leif Ove Andsnes illuminates the latter’s sole work for piano and orchestra.
Having often been featured as a composer on Cleveland Orchestra programs, Thomas Adès makes his podium debut with the orchestra, leading his own music coupled with analogous works of Sibelius.
Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra in three stylistically distinct works, all of which put to test the orchestra’s new concertmaster, David Radzynski.
Klaus Mäkelä returns to Cleveland for a program of extremes in contrast and character: Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and a concerto for orchestra by Unsuk Chin.
Víkingur Ólafsson offers remarkable interpretations of major works of Mozart, placed alongside lesser-known pieces by four of the composer’s most important contemporaries for a memorable recital.
Thomas Søndergård make his Cleveland debut with the unabridged 1910 version of Stravinsky's score, while Britten’s Violin Concerto opened with an excellent Stefan Jackiw.
On the orchestra's first US tour since Kirill Petrenko took over as Chief Conductor, their Carnegie Hall program includes a work by American composer Andrew Norman, an early Mozart concerto and Korngold’s sole symphony.
The Cincinnati Symphony thoughtfully illuminates a diverse cross-section of 20th-century repertoire with conductor Michael Francis and pianist Behzod Abduraimov.
Daniel Harding and Antoine Tamestit impress in their Cleveland Orchestra debuts, tackling the complexities of a Widmann concerto and a Strauss tone poem.
With conductor Peter Oundijan, the Indianapolis Symphony showcases two principals in Brahms’ Double Concerto, the program rounded out with Pictures at an Exhibition.
DSO music director Jader Bignamini leads his ensemble in the glory of Beethoven’s Ninth, prefaced by a recent work written as a companion piece to the symphony.
