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New York Times
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Why Isn't My Favorite Composer More Popular?
When I was just getting started as an operagoer, I went to see 'The Makropulos Case,' the Czech composer Leos Janacek's tale of a woman desperate to elongate a life that has already lasted three centuries. It left me exhilarated, dazed and with only one thing on my mind: buying a ticket to return the next weekend. I'm not the only one to have this reaction. 'People felt they had to come back,' Yuval Sharon said recently about the audiences when he directed 'The Cunning Little Vixen,' another thrilling, heart-rending Janacek opera. 'It was unlike any piece they'd experienced. It just seizes you.' That's still my feeling about Janacek's operas. On Sunday, when the Cleveland Orchestra finished an elegant but crushing concert version of 'Jenufa,' which ends with a vision of forgiveness and reconciliation after extraordinary suffering, I would have happily sat through it again, right then and there. For this brutal account of small-town woe, Janacek wrote earthy, lush yet sharply angled music, with unsettled rhythms and roiling depths. There are obsessively repeated motifs, as anxious as the characters, as well as passages of folk-inspired sweetness. Janacek loved to transcribe birdsong and people speaking; his vocal lines, molded to the flow of the Czech language, have uncanny naturalness even in lyrical flight and emotional extremity. His climaxes — never more soaring than at the stunned yet hopeful end of 'Jenufa' — are radiant. Neither his heroes nor his villains are uncomplicated; he presents heightened, impossibly vivid situations that are also deeply nuanced. 'They're amazing dramas,' Sharon said. 'They just blast through the stage. They just go.' Yet even many regular operagoers don't know these pieces. They are as propulsive and viscerally affecting as Arthur Miller plays, but those who haven't heard them often think they're esoteric, strictly for connoisseurs. Nothing could be further from the truth. 'My experience is that the audiences that come adore the work,' said Anthony Freud, who has programmed Janacek at companies in Wales, Houston and Chicago. But those audiences don't tend to come en masse. 'When you're budgeting ticket sales with Janacek,' he added, 'you're going to have to cushion it with 'Bohème' and 'Traviata.'' Toward the end of the 20th century, it seemed that Janacek's operas were becoming regular presences on major American stages, if not quite staples like 'Carmen.' From 1990 to 2010, the Metropolitan Opera — where my life was changed by that 'Makropulos Case' — presented 10 runs of four works. Houston Grand Opera did a Janacek cycle around that time. Conductors like Charles Mackerras, who painstakingly revealed the composer's intentions in new editions of the scores, were crucial advocates. But the surge stalled. While Janacek isn't ignored entirely — Cleveland's was my third American 'Jenufa' since 2019, after full stagings in Santa Fe and Chicago — he's rarer than I would have predicted, or hoped. The Met hasn't performed a Janacek opera since 2016. The reasons aren't entirely mysterious. His works are accessible to listeners but challenging to perform, necessitating substantial, and expensive, rehearsal processes. (They're easier to find in opera- and resource-rich Europe.) Patrick Summers, Houston Grand Opera's longtime music and artistic director, speculated that Janacek, and other not-quite-core repertory, has been the victim of a generally praiseworthy development: the increasing success of new American opera. With most companies doing ever-fewer titles in a season, there is more competition for each slot given to less familiar work. Summers gave the hypothetical example of a company that wanted to do both 'Jenufa' and a contemporary American piece — for example, Kevin Puts's 'Silent Night,' which Houston will present next season. ''Jenufa' wouldn't replace 'La Bohème,'' he said. 'It would replace 'Silent Night.' So you have to choose, and these days you might well choose 'Silent Night.'' For the art form's health, though, there needs to be room for both. The son of a village schoolteacher, Janacek was born in 1854. While he was a gifted musician from childhood and a highly regarded organist and teacher, he struggled for recognition as a composer. It was 'Jenufa' that truly established his reputation, though not right away. After germinating for years, it premiered in 1904, but it wasn't until a dozen years later that a performance in Prague brought him real celebrity. Soon after that, in the summer of 1917, he met Kamila Stosslova. Both were married, and Stosslova was nearly 40 years younger, but they developed an intimate more-than-friendship. The relationship — almost completely, and agonizingly, unconsummated — inspired a late-in-life creative flowering that bloomed until Janacek's death, at 74, in 1928. The fruits of this period include a pair of searching string quartets, and the stirring orchestral Sinfonietta and 'Taras Bulba.' Even more remarkable was the burst of four operatic masterpieces: 'Kat'a Kabanova,' about a country girl driven to suicide after a brief affair; 'The Cunning Little Vixen,' in which human and animal characters collide in a warm yet entirely unsentimental allegory of nature's transformations; 'The Makropulos Case'; and 'From the House of the Dead,' based on Dostoevsky's novel set in a Siberian prison. Bleak yet beautiful, 'Jenufa' remains his best-known opera. On Sunday the Cleveland Orchestra and its music director, Franz Welser-Möst, captured Janacek's intensity without stinting his tender lyricism. The frigid winds of the second act passed through the ensemble in frosty swirls. The cast was superb, with Latonia Moore a sumptuous and passionate Jenufa, and Nina Stemme harrowing as her stepmother, who attempts to preserve her family's honor through a monstrous sacrifice. As always with Janacek, the audience — about two-thirds of capacity at Severance Music Center — cheered mightily at the end. And as always, that reaction gave me hope. There are other glimmers for Janacek lovers. Des Moines Metro Opera will present 'The Cunning Little Vixen' this summer. The Met has plans to import a grim 'Jenufa' directed by Claus Guth, who staged this season's hit 'Salome.' When I spoke to Yuval Sharon, he was at the airport on the way to Switzerland, where he was meeting about a production of 'The Excursions of Mr. Broucek,' a rarity even by Janacek standards. I hope as many opera houses as possible join their number. For them, and for audiences, I can only echo Anthony Freud: 'There's nothing to be scared of.'
Axios
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Orchestra's Opera & Humanities Festival focuses on reconciliation
Opera, art and community dialogue take center stage in Cleveland over the next 10 days. Why it matters: The Cleveland Orchestra's annual Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival is the celebrated ensemble's signature spring event. It features various performances, art exhibitions and public forums in partnership with other local cultural institutions, starting Friday and running through May 25. The intrigue: The theme of this year's festival is "Reconciliation," inspired by the early 20th-century opera "Jenůfa" and its themes of trauma, forgiveness and redemption. The Cleveland Orchestra, led by conductor Franz Welser-Möst, will perform the opera three times at Severance Music Center on May 17, 22 and 25. State of play: The full lineup of festivities begins at 8:30am Friday with a symposium on immigration at Severance. Other highlights include performances by Chucho Valdés Royal Quartet and pianist Michelle Cann, as well as forums and exhibitions hosted by the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ideastream and The City Club of Cleveland. Flashback: The Opera & Humanities Festival began in 2023 as the brainchild of André Gremillet, president and CEO of the Cleveland Orchestra. The inaugural theme was "The American Dream" followed by "Power" in 2024. What they're saying:"The goal was to use our annual opera performances to feature not just the Cleveland Orchestra but the incredible cultural scene we have in Cleveland," Gremillet tells Axios. "The festival is based on music first and foremost, but we also want to stimulate some interesting conversations on topics that are timely and important to the community." If you go: The festival features a mix of ticketed and free events.
Axios
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Cleveland Orchestra celebrates the music of "Black Panther"
The Marvel Cinematic Universe invades Severance Music Center this weekend. The intrigue: The Cleveland Orchestra, led by world-renowned conductor Anthony Parnther, takes on the music of "Black Panther" for two performances. Composer Ludwig Göransson's score for the 2018 film won both an Academy Award and a Grammy. State of play: Friday's performance will feature a pre-concert talk with Chris Jenkins, a visiting assistant professor of musicology at Oberlin College. Saturday's performance will be preceded by a conversation with Derrick and Kevin Boseman, brothers of the late Chadwick Boseman, who played the iconic title role in "Black Panther." Between the lines: Visitors can also view costumes from the movie on display in Severance's Smith Lobby through April 6. The big picture: Movie scores have become all the rage for the Cleveland Orchestra. The ensemble has performed music from films like "Jurassic Park," "West Side Story," "The Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" franchise in recent years. 💭 Troy's thought bubble: Even compared to the orchestra's recent performances, "Black Panther" in concert feels special.
New York Times
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
For Cleveland Orchestra, It's Beethoven (and Freedom) to the Rescue
The Cleveland Orchestra showed up at Carnegie Hall this week without a star. When the music director Franz Welser-Möst planned the ensemble's two-night visit to New York, the opening concert, on Tuesday, was to be headlined by the soprano Asmik Grigorian. A volcanic presence on European stages who rarely makes it to the United States, Grigorian would have been a major box-office draw. Then came news that she was pulling out for unspecified personal reasons. Time to break out the emergency rations of Beethoven. The remaining rump of the Clevelanders' program for Tuesday, the Suite from Janacek's 'From the House of the Dead,' based on Dostoyevsky's account of life in a Russian prison colony, was joined by Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and, for good measure, his 'Leonore' Overture No. 3. A crowd-pleasing solution to a marketing headache? A repertory staple musicians can shine in without too much rehearsal? Not at all. The new program was 'a chance to say something important about our world today,' Welser-Möst wrote in a program statement that referred, smartly but vaguely, to people's 'fight for freedom everywhere.' Without naming specifics, Welser-Möst explained that the Janacek was a testament to 'human dignity' in 'desolate circumstances.' Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 traced a progression 'from darkness to light,' he added, while the overture, written for Beethoven's political prison break opera 'Fidelio,' represented the 'greatest music about freedom ever written.' Far from being a stop gap, the new program created what Welser-Möst called 'a profound statement' that was sure to 'resonate deeply' with New Yorkers. (No similar claims were made for Wednesday's program, which consisted of Stravinsky's 'Pétrouchka' and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5.) The resulting concert on Tuesday was invigorating and full of ravishing playing, as was the performance the next night. But if there was any profound truth to be gleaned from the double helping of Beethoven served alongside Janacek's dazzling suite, it was only that the Fifth and the 'Leonore' overture provide ready-made templates for struggle narratives ending in triumph. Just whose struggle and what is being overcome — I'm guessing that Gaza, Ukraine and the state of American democracy are among them — remain open to interpretation. In fairness, the Cleveland Orchestra has never relied on provocative or politically minded programming to earn its devoted fan base and superlative-studded reviews. In his 23 years at the helm, Welser-Möst has fine-tuned this storied ensemble into an elegant, cohesive and keenly responsive engine. Other American orchestras have struggled to define their role in society as they fret over accusations that their branch of the arts is reactionary and socially irrelevant. The Cleveland Orchestra's image may be conservative — a guardian of a particular European tradition — but it's a well-defined luxury brand that delivers outstanding value. Watching the musicians perform on the same stage that had just hosted the Vienna Philharmonic, I was struck by the similarities between the two institutions. Some of it had to do with the Cleveland Orchestra's mellow and thoughtfully blended brass section, which stands apart from the more metallic and muscular playing in most American orchestras. The Cleveland string section physically moves much like its Austrian counterpart, with entire blocks of players bobbing and weaving as in a chamber setting where the whole torso helps signal expressive intent to the group. Especially in the last movement of the Tchaikovsky, it was a pleasure watching the violinists sway and dance as a bloc. And though the ensemble is studded with stars, a spirit of collaborative forbearance infuses solos. The guest concertmaster Jan Mracek was almost self-effacingly light-footed in the virtuosic cadenzas Janacek writes for the solo violin. John Clouser's bassoon simmered with refinement, especially in the Tchaikovsky. And my ear kept being drawn to the uncommonly dark-hued sound of Joshua Smith's flute, which lent unexpected gravitas to an instrument that typically provides light birdlike relief whenever it rises above the orchestral texture. From the podium, Welser-Möst projected discreet authority, conducting with an economy of gesture that highlighted the easy symbiosis between him and the orchestra. In the Beethoven symphony, he was especially attentive to transitional moments, including the exponential crescendo that flares up at the end of the third movement and leads into the explosive final Allegro. Beethoven demands utmost restraint from the orchestra in the bars leading up to that surge, as the music rises in pitch without yet gaining volume. At Carnegie Hall, that passage came across as almost claustrophobically repressive, the eventual uncorking of sound and energy seeming to burst out like pent-up frustration. It was one of those musical thrills that might have made Beethoven's Fifth such a safe bet with audiences of all kinds. But to a politically inclined listener, it could also sound like a tipping point in a mass movement leading to revolution.
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
There's a new way to listen to Apple Music Classical, plus brand new music
If you're a classical music lover, there's excellent news. You no longer need an app to listen to Apple Music Classical. The service is now also available directly through the web, making it available wherever you have a browser. Launched in March 2023, Apple Music Classical aims to enhance the experience for classical music listeners. It has an extensive catalog of over 5 million tracks, including famous masterpieces and lesser-known gems. The app includes a specialized search function tailored to the complexities of classical music. Users can search by composer, work, conductor, opus number, and more, making it easy to find specific recordings. The app (and website) includes curated playlists, editor's picks, and composer biographies, guiding new and experienced classical music listeners. Apple Music Classical is accessible on the web and iOS, CarPlay, and Android devices. It supports high-resolution lossless audio with quality up to 192 kHz/24-bit. Additionally, it offers thousands of recordings in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos, providing an immersive listening experience. To celebrate the web launch, Apple is introducing a new recording: conductor Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra's performance of Julius Eastman's Symphony No. 2 and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 2. This exclusive recording will be available only on Apple Music Classical for the next six weeks. The first piece is titled 'The Faithful Friend: The Lover's Love for the Beloved,' and it is an important work by the American composer. The second piece, commonly referred to as the 'Little Russian' symphony, is also a notable work. Apple Music Classical is available to any Apple Music subscriber at no additional cost. The service is built on Primephonic, a classical music streaming service Apple acquired in 2021. You can access Apple Music Classical on the web at
