Sat 7/30 @ 7PM
It was just over 30 years ago when the Cleveland Orchestra’s then-music director Christoph von Dohnanyi interviewed rising conducting talent Jeannette Sorrell for an assistant conductor job, telling her flatly that Cleveland would never accept a woman conductor. While that turned out to be Cleveland’s and the music’s world’s gain, motivating Sorrell to form her own, now world-renowned, ensemble, Apollo’s Fire, it’s good to see that times have changed. We’ve recently seen quite a few women leading the Cleveland Orchestra, many of a rising generation.
Ruth Reinhardt, 34, and currently assistant conductor with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, is one of those. The German violinist earned her master’s in conducting from Juilliard, earned fellowships with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony and the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Music Center. She’s well on her way to an illustrious international career.
This weekend, she’ll be back in Cleveland to make her debut at the Blossom Festival, conducting the Cleveland Orchestra in Felix Mendelssohn’s popular Violin Concerto with Alexi Kenney replacing the originally scheduled violinist Sergey Khachatryan (due to visa delays), as soloist; Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 5; and the Cleveland Orchestra premiere of contemporary Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz’s Overture. It’s unlikely anyone will walk out when they see Reinhardt onstage.
Get tickets here.
blossom/mendelssohns-violin-concerto/