Thu 5/18 @ 7:30PM
Fri 5/19 @ 11AM
Sat 5/20 @ 8PM
This week, the Cleveland Orchestra will be offering audiences something old and something new. The old is a pair of Haydn symphonies: No. 39 and No. 96 (“The Miracle.”)
The new is Topos (for Orchestra) by the orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow Anthony Cheung, being given its world premiere performances by the orchestra this weekend. The piece, which was commissioned by the orchestra, “re-engages familiar yet constantly evolving ‘topics’ from the vast repository of Western music,” says Cheung. “Each movement is based on one or several related musical topics: representational tropes with special recurring characteristics that evoke scenery, psychological effect, natural and cultural phenomena, etc. The fluidity of meaning in these topics fascinates me.”
He cites allusions to other composers that crop up in the piece including Haydn, Mahler, Beethoven, Schumann and the composer whose piece rounds out this week’s programs, 20th-century composer Gyorgi Ligeti, whose piano concerto will feature Pierre-Laurent Aimard as soloist.
Cheung’s piece will be played at the two evening concerts where he will do a pre-concert conversation an hour prior to the concert with Rabbi Roger C. Kelin of The Temple-Tifereth Israel. The Friday morning concert will include only the Haydn symphonies and the Ligeti concerto. Franz Welser-Möst conducts. Tickets are $29-$120.
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106