The Cleveland Orchestra in Miami
2021-22 Season
John S. and James L. Knight Concert Hall
TCHAIKOVSKY’S FOURTH
Friday, January 21, 2022 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 8 p.m.
The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
SHCHEDRIN Carmen-Ballet Suite
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4
Passionate music, passionate lives. This concert offers two dramatic works in which each composer poured out his heart and exposed his soul.
Tchaikovsky sought refuge in music when his life was in disarray. He entered into a disastrous marriage that only lasted six weeks. Nearly mad with passion, he poured his feelings into his Fourth Symphony, and the act of writing the music helped to rebalance his sanity. He said of the finale, “Rejoice in the happiness of others, and you can still live.”
Shchedrin’s colorful and flamboyant opera Carmen, with its eye-popping portrayal of on-the-street life filled with women who smoke, fight and drink, scandalized Parisian audiences but became wildly famous for its music and emotional intensity. Franz Welser-Möst offers a different look at this beloved work through a brilliant arrangement for string orchestra and percussion, created as a ballet score by Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin for his dancer wife, prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya. The intense passions of this famously tune-filled opera are revealed in unexpected detail across 13 movements that just beg you to dance.
MOZART AND DVOŘÁK
Friday, January 28, 2022 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, January 29, 2022 at 8 p.m.
The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Latonia Moore, soprano
MOZART Symphony No. 36 (“Linz”)
WALKER Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra
DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 8
Music for lovers of the natural world. Dvořák was a gardener, and loved to roam the fields and woods surrounding his home in southern Bohemia. The tone of his Eighth Symphony is one of bucolic euphoria, the sheer joy of being alive in a world of natural wonders, filled with birdcalls and dance tunes.
The performance opens with Mozart’s Linz Symphony, widely regarded as one of his great mature symphonies. Mozart and his wife, Constanze, were passing through Linz while travelling from Salzburg to Vienna when they were invited by an old family friend, the Count Thun-Hohenstein, to stay for several days and give a concert. Mozart was unprepared, so he composed this symphony in six days. The resulting work is Mozart at his best — wittily elegant and dazzling. Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning "Lilacs" is based on Walt Whitman's poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,” a poignant elegy to Abraham Lincoln.
READ THIS: HEALTH REQUIREMENTS FOR YOUR SAFETY
The Arsht Center remains deeply committed to the health and peace of mind of our guests, artists and staff. Based on guidance from national and local health officials, these performances are seated at full capacity. Face coverings are required. We are also maintaining enhanced cleaning, sanitation and air filtration procedures. Please visit here for more details and future updates.