Thu 10/24 @ 7:30PM
Fri 10/25 @ 8PM
Sat 10/26 @ 8PM
Usually, the Cleveland Orchestra plays the same program several times over a weekend.
Not this coming weekend.
As part of a mini-festival it calls Fate and Freedom: Music of Beethoven and Shostakovich, it’s cramming a lot more, different music into its programs.
“Music Director Franz Welser-Möst conceived the Festival to look more closely at landmark symphonies by Beethoven and Shostakovich and provide context around their creation, while examining the ever-relevant themes of personal and societal freedom they express,” says the orchestra’s press release.
Welser-Möst amplified that idea, saying ““Beethoven and Shostakovich were very political composers. Their music was written to express the feeling of the times they lived in – there were new feelings about how to live. …The symphonies of Beethoven and Shostakovich can teach us so much about our lives.”
The festival kicks off with a couple of film screenings. Tue 10/22’s screening of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, featuring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, takes place at the Cleveland Cinematheque. The Wed 10/23 showing of the 1929 silent film The New Babylon features a score by Shostakovich. It takes place at the Cleveland Museum of Art and will include a pre-screening discussion.
Thursday night at Severance Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra plays Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6. Prior to the concert at 6:30, Welser-Möst will be interviewed in stage so be in your seat early.
Friday’s program includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8. Frank J. Oteri, New Music USA’s composer advocate and senior editor of NewMusicBox will do a pre-concert talk with Oberlin visiting professor of Russian/Soviet history Rebecca Mitchell at 7PM in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Hall.
The festival concludes Saturday with the orchestra playing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10. At 7pm in Reinberger Chamber Hall, members of the orchestra will perform chamber workers by both composers.
Tickets to the film screenings are $9. Concert tickets are $49-$149.
http://www.clevelandorchestra.com/index.aspx
Photo by Roger Mastroianni
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106 Cleveland, OH 44106
Cleveland, OH 44106