Through Wed 1/6
One of many eagerly waited seasonal Cleveland events is the annual series of holiday pops concert by the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall. They feature area choirs, familiar carols, sing-alongs and Santa. While some us can remember way back to the spring when the orchestra cancelled the remainder of its 2019-2020 season and promised it would be back in the fall, that old coronavirus had other ideas.
To take some of the hurt out of a disappointing that’s consisted of online offerings, the Cleveland Orchestra is gifting listeners with both new and archival Christmas recordings on its Adella digital streaming app, adella.live. The two concerts feature a lot of the same programming you would’ve heard at Severance Hall.
The 75-minute visual album audio concert recording Home for the Holidays with The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus includes both recently and previously record tracks. The Orchestra’s current Assistant Conductor Vinay Parameswaran conducting seasonal favorites, such as selections from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, “Deck the Halls,” “White Christmas” and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Greensleeves, recorded at Severance Hall this month.They’re joined by other previously released recordings such as “Jingle Bells,” “Angels We Have Heard on High,” O Come All Ye Faithful,” “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World,” recorded between 1965 and 2010 featuring the Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus.
The Orchestra will also make available A Symphony in Celebration, recorded at Severance Hall in 1984 and led by the Orchestra’s former Director of Choruses and Assistant Conductor Robert Page. The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus join the Orchestra in performing seasonal favorites including “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” as Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” “I Wonder As I Wander,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” “We Three Kings,” Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. So you can make up for those missed Messiah sings in the privacy of your own home!
Both are available for free listening through Wednesday December 6 here.