“Blossom Music Center was the place to be last weekend, especially for burgeoning fans of classical music and the Cleveland Orchestra,” writes Zachary Lewis in Tuesday’s (7/22) Plain Dealer (Cleveland). “Thousands, most of them new to the group, attended Sunday’s concert without charge, courtesy of the Cleveland Foundation, the ensemble concerned itself almost entirely with music culled from the foundation of the art…. The orchestra … offered nothing more or less than what it almost always does: committed, first-rate accounts of interest to even the most serious aficionados.… Assistant conductor Brett Mitchell brought off a propulsive, fiercely focused performance [of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony]. Flawlessly paced and illuminated by brilliant woodwinds, the reading presented the listener with ample servings of madness and sorrow, and allowed time for both to sink in fully.” Bramwell Tovey conducted a Saturday program that included De Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat, Bizet’s Carmen Suite, and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27, featuring pianist Francesco Piemontesi. “Apparently delighted by the music, Blossom’s birds chirped at peak volume throughout, presaging the response by the audience that inspired the pianist to deliver a rhapsodic account of Debussy’s ‘Feux d’Artifice’ (‘Fireworks’) Prelude as an encore.”
Posted July 25, 2014
