Thu 3/2 @ 7:30PM
Fri 3/3 @ 7:30PM
Sat 3/4 @ 8PM
Sun 3/5 @ 3PM
The Cleveland Orchestra’s program this week offers what has become an increasingly common mix on symphony stages: beloved and familiar pieces coupled with less familiar ones. Most recently, instead of the less familiar being something more challenging and less comfortable to the ear than Bach, they’ve usually been pieces by under-recognized women composers and composers of color.
And it’s a safe bet that you don’t know French composer Louise Farrenc or her music, as she lived in 19th century when women doing anything outside of raising children and tending to men was looked down on, at least among the classes to whom education was accessible. She showed talent for piano early, and despite marriage at 17 and children, she had a long successful career as a concert pianist, professor of piano at the Paris conservatory, and a composer (mainly of piano music), and helped run her husband’s successful music publishing company. She defied the odds. She also wrote three symphonies, and the Cleveland Orchestra will play her Symphony No. 3 in F minor written in 1847.
Probably nothing more needs to be said about repertoire staples, Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G or his familiar orchestration of Mussorgsky’s beloved Pictures at an Exhibition, also on the program. Her fellow French composer was born months before Farrenc’s death in 1875 and his music is well known to concertgoers. His pieces, like his life, span the 19th and 20th century, in style and influences.
The soloist for the concert is 39-year-old, Juilliard-educated Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. Go here for tickets.