Sat 8/5 @ 7PM
While much of the Cleveland Orchestra’s summer schedule at Blossom Music Center is typically safe — lots of Beethoven and Mozart —occasionally, such as this weekend, they do get a little adventurous.
The concluding piece is at least by a familiar name on concert programs, Finnish-Swedish composer Jean Sibelius. His Symphony No. 1 was first performed in 1899 with a revised version debuting in 1900. The orchestra’s press release describes it as “opening] with mystery — the breathy sound of a single clarinet gradually joined by the distant rumbling of timpani — giving way to gorgeous, romantic, searching melodies.”
Audiences will likely be much less familiar with Sarah Kirkland Snider, who composed her 2015 piece Something for the Dark as a commission from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
She says, “Thinking about Detroit led me to think about resilience, and what it means to endure. After a brief hint of passing doubt, Something for the Dark opens with a bold, heroic statement of hope and fortitude in the horns and trombones. I think of this music as the optimism of a very young person. Eventually, the music finds its way to solid ground, and though its countenance has now darkened, its heroism a distant memory, it finds a kind of clear-eyed serenity — and, maybe, even, the kind of hope that endures.”
Also on the program is John Adams’ Century Rolls, a piano concerto composed on commission from the Cleveland Orchestra and first performed at Severance Hall in September 1997 under the baton of Christoph von Dohnányi with Emanuel Ax as the soloist. At Blossom rising 29-year-old American star Conrad Tao will be the soloist.
David Robertson will lead the orchestra, which will be joined by the Kent Blossom Chamber Orchestra. Get tickets here.