Thu 3/21 @ 7:30PM
Fri 3/22 @ 11AM
Sat 3/23 @ 8PM
The Cleveland Orchestra has dubbed its next program “A Hero’s Life,” after the Richard Strauss piece, “Ein Heldenleben,” that closes their concerts this weekend. The 1898 tone poem is a nearly hour-long orchestral tour de force that quotes many of his previous works, suggesting — though he sometimes denied it — that the “hero” was himself. Critics who called the piece “a monstrous act of egotism” cast themselves as his adversaries.
The concerts open with Franz Schubert’s 1816 Symphony No. 4 (“Tragic”) and then jump to the 20th century for Anton Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra. (The Schubert is not performed at the Friday morning concert. Franz Welser-Möst conducts.
Tickets are $21-$165.