The Cleveland Orchestra will perform in Prague after 33 years
The ensemble returns to Prague after thirty-three years.
“The Cleveland Orchestra represents the best that exists among symphony orchestras on the American continent. He is often ranked among the interpretation elite, such as the Berlin or Vienna Philharmonics or the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw Orkest,” says Jan Simon, director of Dvořák’s Prague.
In addition to Prague, the Cleveland Orchestra will perform on its tour in prestigious halls such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Musikverein or the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.
His Prague concert will be dedicated to the music of composer Richard Strauss.
“When I was little, my mother often told me about Strauss’s The Pink Cavalier. She was enchanted by him, she had heard him many times in Vienna and there was no other way than to fall in love with him too. As a young conductor I was fascinated by Strauss. What can he get from the orchestra, what colors, what sound,” says Austrian Franz Welser-Möst, chief conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra.
The orchestra will perform Strauss’s symphonic poems Macbeth and Enspiel’s Mischief and the orchestral suite from his opera The Pink Cavalier, whose music combines melancholy, bitter humor and the philosophy of the story of the last love of an aging elegant woman. The instrumental color of Strauss’s compositions makes it possible to fully demonstrate the playing quality of all members of the orchestra, which has a reputation as the most European ensemble precisely because of its sound delicacy and clarity.
The Cleveland Orchestra was founded in 1918, and during its more than a century of existence Leopold Stokowski, George Szell, Pierre Boulez, Christoph von Dohnányi and also the Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša worked with it. In 1964, the Czech violinist Josef Suk performed Dvořák’s Violin Concerto with him in New York’s Carnegie Hall.