Sat 7/22 @ 7PM
French composer Claude Debussy’s La mer, subtitled “three symphonic sketches for orchestra,” is undoubtedly the best known of the three pieces the Cleveland Orchestra will perform this weekend at Blossom Music Center. Composed in 1905, it recalls his childhood visits to the Mediterranean coast and deploys his impressionistic style to capture the sea’s various moods.
The program opens with Music for Symphony Orchestra by 20th-century Japanese composer (and son of a noted Japanese writer) Yasushi Akutagawa, written in 1950 as a tribute to his Russian influences, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, the latter of whom he got to know after entering the Soviet Union illegally in 1954. The program is rounded out by Shostakovich’s own 1959 Cello Concerto No. 1.
Twenty-four-year old American cellist Zlatomir Fung is the concerto soloist; another relative youngster, 37-year-old Singaporean Kahchun Wong, conducts the orchestra. Go here for tickets.