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Now firmly in its second century, The Cleveland Orchestra, under the leadership of Franz Welser-Möst since 2002, is one of the most sought-after performing ensembles in the world. Year after year, the ensemble exemplifies extraordinary artistic excellence, creative programming, and community engagement. In recent years, The New York Times has called Cleveland “the best in America” for its virtuosity, elegance of sound, variety of color, and chamber-like musical cohesion.
Founded by Adella Prentiss Hughes, the Orchestra performed its inaugural concert in December 1918. By the middle of the century, decades of growth and sustained support had turned the ensemble into one of the most admired around the world.
The past decade has seen an increasing number of young people attending concerts, bringing fresh attention to The Cleveland Orchestra’s legendary sound and committed programming. More recently, the Orchestra launched several bold digital projects, including the streaming platform Adella.live and its own recording label. Together, they have captured the Orchestra’s unique artistry and the musical achievements of the Welser-Möst and Cleveland Orchestra partnership.
The 2025–26 season marks Franz Welser-Möst’s 24th year as Music Director, a period in which The Cleveland Orchestra has earned unprecedented acclaim around the world, including a series of residencies at the Musikverein in Vienna, the first of its kind by an American orchestra, and a number of celebrated opera presentations.
Since 1918, seven music directors — Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodziński, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Franz Welser-Möst — have guided and shaped the ensemble’s growth and sound. Through concerts at home and on tour, broadcasts, and a catalog of acclaimed recordings, The Cleveland Orchestra is heard today by a growing group of fans around the world.
conductor
An Italian with a strong affinity for the German repertoire. A “melodist by nature” (Der Tagesspiegel), who knows how to convincingly transfer the attention to detail of stylistically informed interpretation practice to the large apparatus. A true orchestral practitioner, moreover, whose artistic creative power is combined with the need for a musical style based on partnership. Antonello Manacorda’s versatility as a conductor lies in the wealth of his musical and cultural influences: Born in Turin into an Italian-French family, educated in Amsterdam and at home in Berlin for many years, Manacorda was a founding member and long-time concertmaster of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, founded by Claudio Abbado, before studying conducting with the legendary Finnish teacher Jorma Panula. Today, Antonello Manacorda can be heard just as frequently in opera productions at the world’s most important opera houses as he can on the podium of leading symphony orchestras. His work centres on the Kammerakademie Potsdam, which he has been Artistic Director of since 2010 and with which he has made a number of award-winning recordings. Antonello Manacorda will retire as Chief Conductor of the ensemble at the end of the 2024/25 season, although he will remain associated with it as Honorary Conductor.
Opera productions will take Antonello Manacorda to the Stuttgart State Opera (Il trovatore), the Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), the Zurich Opera (Nozze di Figaro) and the Opéra National de Paris (Pelléas et Mélisande) in the current and upcoming seasons.
In the field of symphonic music, Antonello Manacorda will be a guest conductor with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the 2024/2025 season. Together with the Kammerakademie Potsdam, he will perform a concert version of Weber’s Freischütz in Potsdam, at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Berlin Philharmonie.
In recent seasons, Antonello Manacorda has worked successfully with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the SWR Symphony Orchestra, among others. He has enjoyed great success with his debuts at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (Le Nozze di Figaro), a new production of Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Der Freischütz at the Bavarian State Opera, his debut at the Semperoper Dresden (Der Freischütz) and a new production of Bizet’s Carmen at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.
With the Kammerakademie Potsdam, Antonello Manacorda has recorded both a Mendelssohn cycle and a Schubert cycle for Sony Classical, both of which were critically acclaimed. At the ECHO Klassik 2015, the Kammerakademie Potsdam received the prize in the “Orchestra of the Year” category for the cycle of all Schubert symphonies. In October 2022, Antonello Manacorda and the Kammerakademie Potsdam were awarded the OPUS KLASSIK in the same category for their recording of the last Mozart symphonies. Together with the Kammerakademie Potsdam, Antonello Manacorda has been recording the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven since 2022, which have long played a central role in their joint concerts – the complete recording was released in May 2024 by Sony Classical.
violin
Augustin Hadelich is one of the great violinists of our time. Known for his phenomenal technique, insightful and persuasive interpretations, and ravishing tone, he appears extensively on the world’s foremost concert stages. Hadelich has performed with all the major American orchestras as well as the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, and many other eminent ensembles.
During the 2024 summer festivals season, Hadelich appeared at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Tanglewood Music Festival with the Boston Symphony, Bravo! Vail with the New York Philharmonic, Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony, Aspen Music Festival in Colorado and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería in Mexico City.
Highlights of the 24/25 season include returns to the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Vienna Philharmonic, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and The Cleveland Orchestra. Hadelich will also perform with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Vienna Symphony, London Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, New Zealand Symphony, Orquesta Nacional de España as well as the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Dallas and Seattle. As artist-in-residence, he will perform with the Dresden Philharmonic throughout the season, and will tour with the RSB Radio Orchestra Berlin, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, as well as the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. He will perform solo violin recitals in London, Barcelona, Gothenburg, Tallinn, and Abu Dhabi, as well as duo recitals with the pianist Francesco Piemontesi in Budapest, Dresden, Katowice, Rome, and Bologna. In the summer of 2025, he will perform extensively in Asia, including engagements with the Seoul Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, and tour concerts in Taiwan with the Berliner Barocksolisten.
Hadelich received a GRAMMY “Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo” in 2016 for his recording of Dutilleux’s Concerto “L’Arbre des songes” with Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot. A Warner Classics Artist, his most recent album “American Road Trip”, a journey through the landscape of American music with pianist Orion Weiss, was released in August 2024. Other albums for Warner Classics include Paganini’s 24 Caprices (2018); Brahms and Ligeti Violin Concertos (2019); the GRAMMY-nominated “Bohemian Tales”, which includes the Dvořák Violin Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Jakub Hrůša (2020); the GRAMMY-nominated recording of Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas (2021); and “Recuerdos”, a Spain-themed album featuring works by Sarasate, Tarrega, Prokofiev and Britten (2022).
Augustin Hadelich, a dual American-German citizen born in Italy to German parents, rose to fame when he won the Gold Medal at the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Further distinctions followed, including an Avery Fisher Career Grant (2009), U.K.’s Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship (2011), and an honorary doctorate from the University of Exeter in the U. K. (2017). In 2018, he was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by the influential magazine Musical America. Hadelich holds an Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Joel Smirnoff, and in 2021, was appointed to the violin faculty at Yale School of Music. He plays a 1744 violin by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, known as ‘Leduc, ex Szeryng’, on loan from the Tarisio Trust.
Composer
A cornerstone of the repertoire, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto is one of the most beloved symphonic works ever written.
At age 35, Mendelssohn could already look back on an international career of a decade and a half. He had been able to turn his fortunate personal situation into an advantage and fully enjoy the benefits of a privileged family background (his father was a wealthy banker who was able to provide him with the best education and even put an orchestra at his disposal to play his early works). Since 1837, Mendelssohn was himself happily married and was, by 1844, the father of four. His first name, Felix (Latin for “happy”), appeared to be a good omen for his life. No one could then have predicted Mendelssohn’s tragic death only three years later.
This concerto was a gift of friendship to a musician particularly close to Mendelssohn’s heart. Mendelssohn had known Ferdinand David (1810–73) since boyhood, and shortly after he took over the directorship of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, he invited the violinist to be his concertmaster. David held this position for 37 years, serving long after Mendelssohn’s untimely death.
David shared with Mendelssohn many of the administrative duties at the orchestra. They also frequently performed chamber music together, with Mendelssohn at the piano. Mendelssohn’s fondness for David can be seen in this passage from a letter to the violinist: “I realize that there are not many musicians who pursue such a straight road in art undeviatingly as you do, or in whose active course I could feel the same intense delight that I do in yours.”
This was written in 1838, the year Mendelssohn made his first sketches of the Violin Concerto. Other commitments, however, prevented him from completing the work until 1844. The concerto remained one of his last symphonic compositions, followed only by the oratorio Elijah.
The concerto seems perfectly to reflect the composer’s sunny disposition. In this work, as elsewhere in Mendelssohn’s music, Romantic passion is always tempered by Classical restraint, and tender lyrical feelings are balanced by light, even humorous moments. Virtuosity goes hand in hand with a depth of expression achieved only by the greatest masters.
One of Mendelssohn’s most innovative touches comes at the very beginning of the concerto, where he dispenses with the usual orchestral exposition and introduces the solo instrument, with a soaring melody, immediately at the outset of the first movement. The violin remains the center of attention throughout the entire work, with only a few tutti sections for the entire orchestra where the soloist doesn’t play.
In another striking departure from convention, the movements of the concerto are played without pause. It wasn’t the only time Mendelssohn eliminated breaks between movements in his larger works; he had done the same in the “Scottish” Symphony (composed 1829–42). But in the concerto he inserted short connecting passages between the movements. After the first movement, a single note held by a solo bassoon provides a link to the beautiful Andante, and a brief melodic passage serves as a bridge between the second and third movements. The speed of this latter passage, scored for solo violin and string orchestra, is halfway between the preceding slow and subsequent fast tempos. The various moods and sentiments — those of the passionate first, the lyrical second, and the graceful third movements — all flow directly from one another, instead of presenting them as separate entities.
The written-out cadenza of the first movement (which may be in part by David), is also more strongly integrated into the movement than was the case in earlier concertos. Mendelssohn moved it from its traditional place at the end of the movement to the middle, making it grow organically out of the development section and resolve just as naturally in the recapitulation. But the cadenza does not end when the orchestra reenters; it continues while the flute, the oboe, and the first violins play the main theme — another example of the kind of seamless transition between sections that was so important to Mendelssohn.
The triumph of this work, may have been best expressed by the great violinisit Joseph Joachim, who was quoted as saying in 1906: “The Germans have four concertos. The greatest — and the one that makes the fewest concessions — is Beethoven’s. Brahms’s is the closest to Beethoven’s in seriousness. Bruch’s is the richest and the most enchanting. But the dearest of all — the heart’s jewel — is Mendelssohn’s.”
— Peter Laki
Peter Laki is a visiting associate professor at Bard College and a frequent lecturer and writer on music.
The staggeringly talented Augustin Hadelich sets his sights on Mendelssohn’s treasured Violin Concerto, seizing our attention from the iconic introduction all the way through its breathless finale. Conductor Antonello Manacorda also leads Schoenberg’s hyper-romantic Second Chamber Symphony, which took 33 years to be completed, and Schubert’s Eighth Symphony, which famously never was ... though that hasn’t kept the beloved “Unfinished” from its celebrated place in the repertoire.
Augustin Hadelich's performance is generously sponsored by Robin Dunn Blossom and Barbara Blossom in memory of Jaymi Blossom Feeney
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