2014 Blossom Music Festival August 31 Concert

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sunday August 31

BRAHMS AND WIDMANN EUROPEAN TOUR SEND-OFF The Cleveland Orchestra Franz Welser-Mรถst, conductor A fireworks display by American Fireworks Company will take place immediately following this concert, weather permitting.

Franz Welser-Möst Music Director Kelvin Smith Family Endowed Chair The Cleveland Orchestra

PHOTO BY SATOSHI AOYAGI

W I T H T H E U P C O M I N G 2 0 1 4 - 1 5 S E A S O N , Franz Welser-Möst begins his thirteenth year as music director of The Cleveland Orchestra, with a long-term commitment extending to the Orchestra’s centennial in 2018. Under his leadership, the Orchestra is renowned among the world’s greatest ensembles, acclaimed for its musical excellence, and a champion of new composers and innovative programming. The Orchestra is committed to performing more music for more people throughout Northeast Ohio — through concert, community, and education presentations.

Mr. Welser-Möst also serves as general music director of the Vienna State Opera.

Under Mr. Welser-Möst’s leadership, The Cleveland Orchestra has launched a series of residencies in important cultural locations around the world. These include residencies at Vienna’s Musikverein and Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival, as well as programs at New York’s Lincoln Center Festival and at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. The Orchestra’s annual residency in Miami, under the name Cleveland Orchestra Miami, features multiple weeks of concerts coupled with community programs (modeled on the Orchestra’s long-term educational programs in Northeast Ohio) with more than a dozen school partners across the Miami-Dade area.

Opera has been featured as a key component of Franz Welser-Möst’s tenure in Cleveland, with ten operas being presented in his first decade with the Orchestra, including a three-season Mozart cycle of fully-staged Zurich Opera productions at Severance Hall, followed by Strauss’s Salome at Severance Hall and at Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Welser-Möst became general music director of the Vienna State Opera in 2010. He also maintains an ongoing relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic, which he recently led in performances at Carnegie Hall, Lucerne, Salzburg, and Tokyo, as well as twice conducting the ensemble’s annual New Year’s Concert. He previously served a decade-long tenure with the Zurich Opera, leading the company in 40 new productions and culminating in three seasons as general music director.

Mr. Welser-Möst’s recordings and videos have won international awards and acclaim. His Cleveland Orchestra recordings include live video performances of Bruckner Symphonies Nos. 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9.

For his talents and dedication, Mr. Welser-Möst’s honors include the Vienna Philharmonic’s “Ring of Honor” for his long-standing personal and artistic relationship with the orchestra, as well as recognition from the Western Law Center for Disability Rights, honorary membership in the Vienna Singverein and Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, appointment as an Academician of the European Academy of Yuste, a Decoration of Honor from the Republic of Austria for his artistic achievements, and the Kilenyi Medal from the Bruckner Society of America. Mr. Welser-Möst is the co-author of Cadences: Observations and Conversations.

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Conductor

2014 Blossom Festival

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BLOSSOM MUSIC FESTIVAL

Sunday evening, August 31, 2014, at 7:00 p.m.

THE CLEVEL AND ORCHESTRA F R A N Z W E L S E R - M Ö S T , conductor

JÖRG WIDMANN

Con brio: Concert Overture

JOHANNES BRAHMS

Symphony No. 3 in F major, Opus 90

(b. 1973)

(1833-1897)

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Allegro con brio Andante Poco allegretto Allegro — Un poco sostenuto

INTERMISSION BRAHMS

Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Opus 98 1.

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Allegro non troppo Andante moderato Allegro giocoso Allegro energico e passionato — Più allegro

With this concert, The Cleveland Orchestra gratefully honors the FirstEnergy Foundation for their generous support.

This concert is dedicated to Dr. David and Janice Leshner in recognition of their extraordinary generosity in support of The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2013-14 Annual Fund.

Media Partners: WCLV Classical 104.9 FM ideastream® and The Plain Dealer

Blossom Music Festival

Program: August 31

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2O14 European Tour

WIDMANN Jörg Jör g Widm Widmann ann

BRAHMS Joh o annes Braahms ms

The Cleveland Orchestra F R A N Z W E. L S E R - M Ö S T JOSHUA SMITH

NIKOL A J ZNAIDE R

London . Lucerne . Berlin . Linz . Vienna . Paris . Amsterdam

SEPTEMBER 7-22

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The Cleveland Orchestra acknowledges these corporations and individuals for their generous support of the 2014 European Tour: Tele München Group, Miba AG, Dr. Herbert G. Kloiber, Dr. and Mrs. Wolfgang Berndt, Mr. and Mrs. Harro Bodmer, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Umdasch, and Elisabeth and Karlheinz Muhr. With special thanks and recogniBlossom Music Festival tion for the ongoing support of Jones Day and Jones Day Foundation, including international touring sponsorship.

INTRODUCING THE CONCERT

Brahms& Widmann

in earlier acclaimed pairings — of composers Anton Bruckner and John Adams in 2011, of Beethoven and Shostakovich in 2013 — for this concert Franz Welser-Möst has chosen two complementary composers, one modern, one classical. For in the Orchestra’s upcoming European Tour, and in two different concerts this weekend (tonight and this past Friday at SeverLONDON ance Hall), he’s chosen contemporary German comSunday, September 7, 2014 poser Jörg Widmann to contrast and compare with Monday, September 8, 2014 unsurpassed 19th-century masterworks by Johannes BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall Brahms.

LUCERNE Tonight’s concert begins with a work by WidWednesday, September 10, 2014 mann called Con brio. The overture’s title comes Lucerne Festival, from a common tempo marking — meaning “with Culture and Convention Center brilliance / dash / vivacity” — used in Beethoven’s BERLIN Seventh and Eighth symphonies. Here, Widmann Thursday, September 11, 2014 chooses to riff musical colorings from the past for a Musikfest, Berlin Philharmonie very 21st century kind of feeling.

Brahms, the calmer (but certainly not quiet) LINZ Saturday, September 13, 2014 Symphony No. 3 and the energetically passionate (and Wednesday, September 17, 2014 very heroic) Fourth Symphony.

Thursday, September 18, 2014 Heard together and in juxtaposition, these Brucknerhaus works amply demonstrate many of the unrivalled strengths of The Cleveland Orchestra in today’s VIENNA Sunday, September 14, 2014 world. Not just comfortable, but embued with 19thMonday, September 15, 2014 century styles. While at the same time deft ly able to Musikverein grab onto and play musical styles and stylings of toTuesday, September 16, 2014 day and tomorrow.

Vienna Konzerthaus That one of the world’s greatest orchestras calls Northeast Ohio home is a strong source of pride, not PARIS Saturday, September 20, 2014 just for the musicians and musicianship onstage, but Sunday, September 21, 2014 for the larger community of music-lovers who supSalle Pleyel port their work, regularly enjoy their artistry, and follow The Cleveland Orchetra’s unsurpassed acclaim AMSTERDAM around the world.

Monday, September 22, 2014 —Eric Sellen Concertgebouw JUST AS HE DID

2O14 European Tour

Blossom Music Festival

Introduction

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Con brio: Concert Overture for orchestra composed 2008

is fast music, as fast as possible, with great rhythmic drive. I try not to repeat myself. When I finish a piece, I have to try something else!” says Jörg Widmann.

The overture’s title comes from a common tempo marking — meaning “with brilliance / dash / vivacity” — used in Beethoven’s Seventh and Eighth symphonies. Widmann explains that he hatched the idea for the piece when Mariss Jansons asked him to write a concert opener to a program of these two Beethoven symphonies. Beethoven uses that marking in both pieces. “Whenever I would hear ‘con brio’ I would always think of Beethoven,” the composer says.

Widmann uses an orchestra similar in size and instrumentation to Beethoven’s, but stresses that he does not quote from Beethoven. Rather, he was inspired by Beethoven’s rhythmic drive. The composer says he loves the “wild and big sound’’ that Beethoven got in the last movement of the Seventh and first movement of the Eighth — and was impressed that Beethoven could achieve such excitement with a relatively small number of winds.

“In Con brio, there are parts that are tricky to play, but they are possible,” Widmann says with a knowing laugh. “The Cleveland Orchestra is so virtuosic it can play anything; I know, because I heard it play Chor in Cleveland. I never heard this piece played that great. In my life I will never forget how they did it.”

Beethoven was capable of imagining exceedingly forwardthinking ideas, the composer observes. “The way he uses accents and sforzando [a sudden, strong attack] makes the point that the bar line is not important for him: he tries to eliminate the barline,” says Widmann. Similarly, Widmann thwarts expectations in Con brio. Overtures often end fortissimo — loud, all out. Not in Con brio, where the rhythmic drive “just disappears into nothing. The last chords are like a skeleton,” says the composer. “It’s like the negative of a photograph; you have the negative images in the air after the music ends.’’

As is his habit, Widmann fine-tuned a few details after the Bavarian Radio Symphony and Mariss Jansons premiered this work in September 2008. In Con brio, he occasionally asks the players to do things they’re not accustomed to doing — for example, the bassoons take off their reeds and blow di“CON BRIO

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Jörg

WIDMANN born June 19, 1973 Munich now living in Freiburg

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About the Music

The Cleveland Orchestra

rectly into the curved metal tube (called the bocal) that leads into the wooden instrument. He also has the flutes play with a whooshing, toneless sound. He added specific directions to the players in the score regarding these special effects following the work’s premiere.

About the Composer J Ö R G W I D M A N N served as The Cleveland Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow 2009-11. The Orchestra has played a number of his works under Franz Welser-Möst’s direction and is encoring four of them in concerts in August and September 2014, in pairings with major works by Johannes Brahms.

Widmann was born in Munich in June 1973, and studied clarinet with Gerd Starke at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich and later (1994-1995) with Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York. He began taking composition lessons with Kay Westermann at the age of eleven and subsequently continued his studies with Wilfried Hiller and Hans Werner Henze (1994-1996) and later with Heiner Goebbels and Wolfgang Rihm in Karlsruhe (1997-1999). In 2001, Jörg Widmann was appointed as the successor to Dieter Klöcker as professor of clarinet at the Freiburg Staatliche Hochschule für Musik. He became a professor of composition there in 2009.

A series of string quartets, written between 1997 and 2005, form one core of Widmann’s creative output. The five string quartets are intended as a large cycle, with each individual work following a traditional form or setting. These are: String Quartet No. I (1997), followed by Choralquartett (2003, revised 2006) and Jagdquartett (premiered by the Arditti Quartet in 2003). The series was completed in 2005 with String Quartet No. IV, first performed by the Vogler Quartet, and Quartet No. V “Versuch über die Fuge” [Attempt at a Fugue], which features a soprano solo and was premiered by Juliane Banse with the Artemis Quartet.

Widmann has also composed a trilogy of works for large orchestra in which he studied the transformation of vocal forms for instrumental forces: Lied (2003-09), Chor (2004), and Messe (2005). In 2007, Christian Tetzlaff and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie gave the premiere of Widmann’s first Violin Concerto. The same year, Pierre Boulez and the Vienna Philharmonic gave the first performance of Armonica for orchestra, in which Widmann combined the tonal colors of a glass harmonica with orchestra to produce a homogenously breathing body of sounds and sound effects. This was followed by Con brio, an homage to Beethoven. Widmann’s new concerto for flute, titled Flûte en suite, was premiered by The Cleveland Orchestra and principal flute Joshua Smith in May 2011.

Widmann has also created musical theater works, including the opera Das Gesicht im Spiegel, which was chosen by the German magazine Opernwelt as the most Blossom Music Festival

About the Composer

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At a Glance Widmann composed Con brio in 2008 on commission from the Bavarian Radio Symphony and conductor Mariss Jansons. It was premiered as part of the orchestra’s season opening concert in Munich on September 25, 2008.

This concert overture runs about 10 minutes in performance. Widmann scored it for a classical orchestra of 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.

The Cleveland Orchestra first performed this work in January 2011, under the direction of Christoph von Dohnányi.

significant first performance of the 2003-04 season. Am Anfang (2009) was the result of a unique collaboration between a visual artist and a composer; Widmann created the work together with the German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer and conducted the world premiere for the 20th anniversary of the Opéra Bastille in Paris. His most recent work is a musicdrama called Babylon for the Munich State Opera.

Widmann’s great passion as a clarinetist is chamber music.

He regularly performs with partners such as Tabea Zimmermann, Heinz Holliger, András Schiff, Kim Kashkashian, and Hélène Grimaud. He has also performed widely as a soloist in orchestral concerts. Fellow composers have dedicated several works to Widmann. He performed the premiere of Music for Clarinet and Orchestra by Wolfgang Rihm in 1999. In 2006, he performed Cantus by Aribert Reimann and, in 2009, at the Lucerne Festival, the world premiere of Rechant by Heinz Holliger.

In addition to his fellowship as The Cleveland Orchestra’s Lewis Young Composer (2009-11), Jörg Widmann has served as composer-in-residence with the Berlin German Symphony Orchestra, Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Vienna Konzerthaus. He has received many prizes and much recognition for his works. In 2013, he was awarded the Heidelberg Spring Music Award and the GEMA German Music Authors Award. He is a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and a full member of the Bavarian Academy of the Fine Arts, the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg, and the German Academy of Dramatic Arts.

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA Like us on facebook: facebook.com/clevelandorchestra Follow us on twitter: @CleveOrchestra

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About the Composer

Blossom Music Festival

Symphony No. 3 in F major, Opus 90 composed 1883

of 1853, when Brahms was twenty years old, he fulfilled a childhood dream by walking down the river Rhine from Mainz to Bonn, a spectacular hike of about a hundred miles full of reminders of German history and legend. One of the first places he stopped at was Wiesbaden and the little town of Rüdesheim close by, famous for the Rheingau wines that are made there. Memories of those days were behind his decision, thirty years later, to spend the summer of 1883 in Wiesbaden. He was a man of regular habits, one of which was to escape from Vienna in the summer months to find a suitably tranquil holiday spot where he could compose in peace.

He usually went to the Austrian or Swiss Alps, but in 1883 he had an invitation from his friends Rudolf and Laura von Beckerath, who lived in Wiesbaden. Rudolf was a winemaker and violinist, Laura was a pianist, and they had houses in both Wiesbaden and Rüdesheim. Brahms took rooms for himself in Wiesbaden’s Geisbergstrasse for the summer. A further enticement was the presence in Wiesbaden of a young singer, Hermine Spies, who Brahms had heard for the first time that January. Her lovely contralto voice and bright personality enchanted him to the point where Brahms’s sister assumed an engagement was in the air. He remained a committed bachelor, but the company of this “pretty Rhineland girl,” as he called her, undoubtedly brightened those summer months and even perhaps pervaded the great work that took shape on his desk — the Third Symphony.

It had been six years since the Second Symphony was written, and in the interval he had composed two overtures and two concertos, one for violin and his Second Piano Concerto.

Brahms was no longer nervous about engaging the most challenging of forms, in fact he was secure in his mature command of musical expression and technique. Each new work was guaranteed an enthusiastic reception; since Wagner’s death in February of that year, Brahms, at fift y, was regarded as Germany’s leading musician. A new symphony from his pen would be a a major event.

Dvořák was in Vienna that October when Brahms returned from Wiesbaden, and the two spent some time together.

IN THE VERY HOT SUMMER

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Johannes

BRAHMS born May 7, 1833 Hamburg died April 3, 1897 Vienna

Blossom Music Festival

About the Music

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The Cleveland Orchestra

Dvořák wrote to Simrock, publisher to both composers: “I’ve never seen him in better spirit. You know how reluctant he is to talk even to his closest friends about his creative work, yet he was not like that with me. I asked to hear something of his new symphony and he played me the first and last movements. I can say without exaggeration that this symphony surpasses the two previous ones. Not perhaps in size and force, but in beauty.”

The Third Symphony differs from the other three in being shorter and milder in tone, without the heroic passages that the others, particularly the First and Fourth, display. It is the only one in which material from one movement reappears in another, and the only one to end quietly in a soft pianissimo (a radical departure from symphonic tradition); it is for that reason less often played today. But many connoisseurs prize it above the other Brahms symphonies for the delicacy of its scoring and its ravishing melodic richness.

The cyclic procedure of recalling, at the end of a multimovement work, the gesture of the opening is rare in Brahms despite the popularity of thematic recall in Liszt, Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, and most other composers of that age. In the Third Symphony it suggests a deep nostalgia, for the opening gesture is the rising F – A-flat – F motif. This is related to the F – A – F motto associated with the violinist Joachim, whose friendship — one of the deepest of Brahms’s life — took shape that same 1853, thirty years before. By substituting the A-flat, Brahms introduced the ambiguity of major-minor tonality that holds the listener’s attention throughout the symphony and is not resolved until we reach those luminous soft chords at the end, pianissimo and in the major-key.

The two central movements are exceptionally touching.

The Andante feels like a set of variations on the clarinet’s elegant theme, but is not so systematic, and some strange and solemn chords in the lower strings provide an enigmatic interlude. The restrained writing for trombones in this movement is masterly.

The melody of the third movement, heard at the start in the cellos, is one to cherish long after the performance is over.

For shapely elegance, it has no rival, and its effect is even more penetrating when it passes first to the winds, then to the first horn on its own. Neither of these two middle movements ever rises in volume to forte for more than a passing moment.

Energetic music is plentiful in both the first and last moveBlossom Music Festival

About the Music

At a Glance Brahms completed his Third Symphony in Wiesbaden during the summer of 1883.

The first performance took place on December 2, 1883, at a concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Hans Richter.

The score was published the following year. Frank van der Stucken conducted the American premiere on October 24, 1884, in New York.

This symphony runs about 35 minutes in performance. Brahms scored it for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, and strings.

The Cleveland Orchestra first performed this work in March 1923 under Nikolai Sokoloff’s direction (at subscription concerts featuring Sergei Rachmaninoff as the soloist in his own Second Piano Concerto). The work was heard most recently in October 2010, in performances at Severance Hall conducted by Semyon Bychkov.

The Cleveland Orchestra recorded this symphony with George Szell in 1964, with Lorin Maazel in 1976, with Christoph von Dohnányi in 1988, and with Vladimir Ashkenazy in 1991.

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ments, along with musical argument (re-shaping themes and figures, and moving through the keys) in Brahms’s sure-handed manner. But they both come to rest with the same dream-like reminiscence of the rising motto and its balanced descending theme. Brahms seems to be perfectly at peace with the world.

The symphony’s first performance took place in Vienna in December 1883 in a concert which also featured Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, also new to the Viennese. Although Vienna was his home, where he had many friends and supporters, there was usually an element of the press determined to cut Brahms down to size. Yet those sour voices were silent in this instance, and the symphony was acclaimed by all, going on to successfully acclaimed performances all over Germany and beyond.

—Hugh Macdonald © 2014

A photograph of Brahms near the end of his life, circa 1895.

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About the Music

Blossom Music Festival

Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Opus 98 composed 1884-85

of Brahms that he delayed composing a symphony until after he was forty out of respect for Beethoven’s great set of nine — and from a fear of being found wanting in comparison with his mighty predecessor. There is much truth in this. Indeed, Brahms acknowledged it himself.

Brahms’s rapid rise, at the age of twenty, into the circle of leading composers was set in motion by Robert Schumann, who declared publicly that Brahms was destined for a great future in the pedigree of German music. In the company of Schumann and his wife Clara, Brahms had played almost exclusively chamber music — which for them represented the real Beethoven legacy, especially the violin sonatas and late quartets, with the unspoken understanding that the Ninth Symphony was not necessarily the center of the Beethoven universe. Not coincidentally, at the same time, the Ninth (and its “Ode to Joy”) was being elevated by Liszt and Wagner and their followers as a pointer to a future in symphonic poem and music drama, two territories in which Brahms never set foot.

When he finally resolved to write a symphony, Brahms had Schumann’s symphonies sounding in his ears as strongly as Beethoven’s — which is why a similarity can be heard between the opening of Schumann’s Fourth and the wide-spread octave with which Brahms began his First. When we reach the finale of Brahms’s First, though, we do unmistakably encounter an echo of the choral finale of Beethoven’s Ninth. “Any fool can see that,” was Brahms’s dismissive comment.

Once he had given one symphony to the world, it was easier for Brahms to embark on its successors. The rest followed more rapidly, within nine years. The Second followed very soon after the First, and the Fourth appeared within two years of the Third.

Self-critical to the point where he destroyed an unknown number of works that did not satisfy his exacting standards, Brahms always regarded symphonic writing as a tough proposition, to the point where we should be thankful that he gave us as many as four — and always grateful for the opportunity to hear each of them.

If Brahms had written a fift h symphony toward the end of his life, one might imagine something gloriously mellow,

I T I S U S U A L LY S A I D

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Johannes

BRAHMS born May 7, 1833 Hamburg died April 3, 1897 Vienna

Blossom Festival 2014

About the Music

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Blossom Music Festival

like the late clarinet music or the Four Serious Songs. But that is not the direction in which the Fourth Symphony pointed.

In its own context, it is the least comfortable of Brahms’s four symphonies, in terms of musical language and sonority. Being familiar and frequently heard in our own time, it rarely causes the wince of doubt that beset its original hearers. (We find it hard to imagine, similarly, that such a beautiful work as the Violin Concerto struck some of its original hearers as uncouth, but . . . history tells us otherwise.)

There is a higher level of dissonance and tension in the Fourth Symphony than in most of Brahms’s music, but as always with this composer, it is perfectly judged — and balanced by faultless craftsmanship and an abundant melodic gift. The symphony was first performed in Meiningen, a small town in central Germany that was briefly of great importance in the musical world thanks to the leadership of musicians like Hans von Bülow and Richard Strauss, who strongly encouraged Brahms and persuaded him in 1885 to grant them the first performance of his latest symphony. Home audiences in Vienna could be fickle, especially as Wagner-mania was sweeping across Europe.

As usual, Brahms shows little interest in the more colorful instruments that most composers were delighting in at that time — no english horn, no bass clarinet, no tuba, no harp.

Though he asks for a contrabassoon in the last two movements to enrich the bass, and a piccolo for the third-movement scherzo, where he ventures into the percussion section with a very un-Brahmsian triangle. And, although he clung to the old-fashioned hand-horns, not the valved variety then in universal use, he wrote for the horns with infinite mastery, as both the slow movement and the scherzo bear witness.

In general outline, Brahms does not deviate from his classical inheritance — a broad, substantial first movement, a lyrical slow movement, a jocular scherzo, and a strong, assertive finale. After the First Symphony, whose opening Allegro is preceded by a slow introduction like a number of Beethoven’s symphonies (and Schumann’s Fourth), Brahms’s remaining symphonies adopt the maxim he always preferred — state your first theme clearly and firmly at the very outset. In this case, the graceful opening theme, with its drooping thirds, is woven into the texture of the whole movement. His writing for strings had never been so rich as here. The main contrast in this movement is rhythmic, for triplet figures keep intrudBlossom Music Festival

About the Music

There is a higher level of dissonance and tension in the Fourth Symphony than in most of Brahms’s music, but as always with this composer, it is perfectly judged — and balanced by faultless craftsmanship and an abundant melodic gift.

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At a Glance Brahms wrote his Fourth Symphony in Mürzzuschlag (Styria, Austria) during the summers of 1884 and 1885. He conducted the first performance on October 25, 1885, in Meiningen, Germany, where Hans von Bülow was the music director. The United States premiere took place on December 11, 1886, with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony.

This symphony runs about 40 minutes in performance. Brahms scored it for 2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, triangle, and strings. (Piccolo and triangle appear in the third movement only, contrabassoon in the third and fourth movements only, and trombones only in the finale.)

The Cleveland Orchestra first performed the Brahms Fourth in April 1925, led by music director Nikolai Sokoloff. It has been presented by the Orchestra with relative frequency since then, most recently at Severance Hall in January 2014 under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst.

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ing. At the end of the movement, however, the powerful drive of the original four-four pulse is unstoppable.

A pair of horns declare the slow movement opening with a misleadingly forceful gesture. For this is the tenderest of slow movements, rich in complex harmony and smooth melody.

The clarinet is especially favored, and the second subject (first heard in the cellos) is one of Brahms’s greatest inspirations, intensified each time it comes back.

The scherzo brings out the hearty hill-walker in Brahms, and the triangle signals a breeziness that we rarely find in his music. The slower middle section is all too brief, as if Brahms was in a hurry to get back to his vigorous exercise, energetic enough to wonder what kind of finale could be sufficiently different to follow it.

Here, for the last movement, Brahms broke with convention and composed a passacaglia (although he did not call it that), a baroque form grandly exhibited by Bach in which a short harmonic sequence is many times repeated in elaborate variation. This is the moment the trombones have been waiting for (a discipline they learned from Beethoven’s Fift h), and they lay down the eight firm chords that define the sequence. The problem for Brahms was (as it was for Bach, too) not to seem to be stuck in the home key. His eight-bar outline is heard thirty times in wonderfully inventive variation, but it escapes from E minor only to taste, briefly, the nectar of E major following a desolate flute solo. The return to E minor sounds like a recapitulation of the beginning, with strong wind chords, but it simply heralds a stirring continuation of the variations, until, following one tremendous sequence after another, the symphony, in Sir Donald Tovey’s memorable words, “storms to its tragic close.”

—Hugh Macdonald © 2014 Hugh Macdonald lives in England and is the Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis.

He s a noted authority on French music. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, and Scriabin.

About the Music

Blossom Music Festival

Brahms in 1889, from a series of photographs by C. Brasch

It is not in fact so hard to compose. But what is fabulously difficult is to leave the superfluous notes under the table. —Johannes Brahms

Blossom Music Festival

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THE CLEVELAND ORCH

OrchestraNews M.U.S.I.C.I.A.N S.A.L.U.T.E

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

The Musical Arts Association gratefully acknowledges the artistry and dedication of all the musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra. In addition to rehearsals and concerts throughout the year, many musicians donate performance time in support of community engagement, fundraising, education, and audience development activities. We are pleased to recognize these musicians, listed below, who have volunteered for such events and presentations during the 201213 and 2013-14 seasons.

Mark Atherton Martha Baldwin Charles Bernard Katherine Bormann Lisa Boyko Charles Carleton John Clouser Hans Clebsch Kathleen Collins Patrick Connolly Ralph Curry Alan DeMattia Maximilian Dimoff Elayna Duitman Bryan Dumm Tanya Ell Kim Gomez David Alan Harrell Miho Hashizume Shachar Israel Joela Jones Richard King Alicia Koelz Stanley Konopka Mark Kosower Paul Kushious Massimo La Rosa Jung-Min Amy Lee Mary Lynch Thomas Mansbacher Takako Masame Eli Matthews Jesse McCormick Daniel McKelway

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Sonja Braaten Molloy Eliesha Nelson Chul-In Park Joanna Patterson Zakany Alexandra Preucil William Preucil Lynne Ramsey Jeffrey Rathbun Jeanne Preucil Rose Stephen Rose Frank Rosenwein Michael Sachs Marisela Sager Jonathan Sherwin Sae Shiragami Emma Shook Joshua Smith Saeran St. Christopher Barrick Stees Richard Stout Jack Sutte Kevin Switalski Brian Thornton Isabel Trautwein Lembi Veskimets Robert Walters Carolyn Gadiel Warner Stephen Warner Richard Weiss Beth Woodside Robert Woolfrey Paul Yancich Derek Zadinsky Jeffrey Zehngut

Hail and Farewell Cellist Thomas Mansbacher will step into retirement at the end of August, after serving as a member of The Cleveland Orchestra for thirty-seven seasons. Please join in extending heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Tom.

Thomas Mansbacher Cello The Cleveland Orchestra

Thomas Mansbacher is retiring from his position as a cellist in The Cleveland Orchestra with the close of the Blossom Music Festival season at the end of August. Mr. Mansbacher has been a member of The Cleveland Orchestra since 1977. Prior to coming to Cleveland, he served as principal cello of the New Haven Symphony and the New Hampshire Sinfonietta. He received a bachelor’s degree from Washington University and a master of music degree from the Yale School of Music.

He studied with Elizabeth Fischer, Aldo Parisot, and George Neikrug. He has taught at Cleveland State University during his years in Cleveland.

In retirement, Tom plans to spend more time with his family. He has two daughters, Sarah and Jessica, and a granddaughter, Eleanor. In his free time, he enjoys reading mysteries, watching Korean films, going to the gym, bicycle touring, and doing yoga, and is a crossword puzzle addict.

“It has been such a privilege and pleasure to be part of this orchestra,” he says.

“Live music is needed in today’s society more than ever. It is a good and most uplifting influence in people’s lives, bringing people together and giving focus and inspiration.”

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The Cleveland Orchestra

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Welser-Möst leads special Vienna Philharmonic concert in Sarajevo to commemorate anniversary of World War I

Orchestra News

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THE CLEVELAND ORCH

Blossom Music Festival

Franz Welser-Möst led a commemorative concert of the Vienna Philharmonic in the atrium of Sarajevo’s rebuilt City Hall on June 28, 100 years after the assassinations of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie in that city began a series of events that resulted in the outbreak of World War I — and the start of a war-torn century for Sarajevo itself.

A giant screen was erected to broadcast the concert for a crowd gathered outside on the opposite side of the Miljacka River. Broadcasters for Eurovision relayed the concert to more than 40 countries across Europe.

“This is a very symbolic day in a very symbolic location,” said Clemens Hellsberg, the outgoing president of the Philharmonic. “We wanted it to be not a view back into history, but a view into the future, after the catastrophe of war.”

In choosing the Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ as part of the concert, Welser-Möst said, “we wished to express the hope that war should never happen on the soil of Europe again.”

Welser-Möst continued, saying that he and the Philharmonic saw themselves performing in this special concert a similar role of reconciliation that conductor Daniel Barenboim has sought with his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, whose mixture of Israeli and Arab players also work to surmount the hatreds and divisions of the past.

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

Earlier this year, The Cleveland Orchestra announced a new group called The Circle, welcoming young professionals ages 21-40. The group is designed for those who share a love of music and an interest in supporting The Cleveland Orchestra in a new and dynamic way. The Circle provides members exclusive access to the Orchestra, with opportunities to meet musicians, and socialize at Severance Hall and at Blossom Music Festival events. Memberships include bi-monthly concert tickets along with opportunities to attend social gatherings to network with friends and cultural business leaders of Northeast Ohio. The objectives of The Circle are to increase engagement opportunities for young people ages 21-40 and to help develop future volunteer community leaders and arts advocates.

The Circle was launched at a Cleveland Orchestra concert in January, and is continuing to grow. Plans for future events are posted on the orchestra’s website, including concerts, get-togethers, and more.

Cost of membership in The Circle is $15 per month for one membership and $20 per month for two memberships and includes bi-monthly tickets. New members join for a minimum of six months.

For additional information, visit clevelandorchestra.com or send an email to thecircle@clevelandorchestra.com.

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

Cleveland Orchestra group for networking and socializing of dynamic young professionals continues to grow

“Whoeverr encounters the mu usic of Jörg Widmann for the fi firstt time is astonished at its direcctness and intensity. Not infrequently, the music breaks like a raging torrent over the listen nerr: it is excessive in its effervescentt virtuosity or its infinite sadnesss.”

—Markus Fein

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Blossom Music Festival