“An engaging new score, a worthy performance of a Mahler symphony and a keyboard star turn highlighted the Cleveland Orchestra’s final program of its Miami season Thursday night,” writes Lawrence Budmen in Monday’s (3/21) Miami Herald. Giancarlo Guerrero led the performance, his last as principal guest conductor for the Clevelanders’ Miami residency. The Arsht Center, the Miami performing arts center where the Cleveland Orchestra performs, “commissioned a world premiere by Israeli composer Avner Dorman to celebrate the center’s 10th anniversary as well as the first decade of the Cleveland residency. The resulting work, Siklòn, is skillfully conceived and considerably more artful than many contemporary fanfare-oriented concert openers. Siklòn is the Haitian Creole word for ‘cyclone’ or ‘hurricane,’ and the composer views the storms that threaten the Miami landscape as a metaphor for the area’s mixing and clashing of cultures. Rhythm is central to Dorman’s music, and the score’s busy opening pages are bursting with pounding exuberance. A veritable gumbo of styles with hints of klezmer and jazz appears during the work’s breezy eight minutes…. Siklòn played to Guerrero’s penchant for instrumental color and gave the orchestra a real workout.” Also on the program were Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1.
Posted March 25, 2016
