The Cleveland Orchestra

Yefim Bronfman has the uncanny ability to play large without stridency, to handle the most delicate passages without losing presence, and to play everything in between with a ravishing sense of tonal colour. In the Second Piano Concerto Welser-Möst and Bronfman brought pulsing energy to the concerto’s second movement, setting up an oasis of calm for the third that segued immediately into the genial finale, whose last chords were nearly obliterated by roars of approval from the audience. Laced into his forceful performance of Piano Concerto No. 1 was a surprising element of fury, as if the pianist had become unhinged momentarily: and yet Bronfman was also wholly present, taking time in relaxed passages to savour every second.

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of Mahler’s birth and just one month short of his own 85th birthday, composer-conductor Pierre Boulez marked his forty-five-year collaboration with the Cleveland Orchestra by directing this very special Mahler-only concert at Ohio’s splendid Severance Hall. Following the Adagio from the unfinished Tenth Symphony, he presented Twelve Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn with soloists Magdalena Kožená and Christian Gerhaher, both much-sought-after opera and concert singers on the world’s leading stages.

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Played before and during the Holocaust, the Violins of Hope instruments have been painstakingly restored by Amnon Weinstein, a second-generation violin-maker, and serve as testaments to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of music to lift hearts in even the most horrific of circumstances.

Brahms Symphonies 1-3. In 2014, Franz Welser-Möst conducts the Cleveland Orchestra in Symphony No. 1 at the Royal Albert Hall, London and Symphonies 2 and 3 at the Musikverein Golden Hall, Vienna. This disc is also available as part of a box set with Brahms' most famous symphonic works. Symphony 1 directed for TV Director by Jonathan Haswell; Symphonies 2 and 3 directed for TV by Brian Large. Herbert G. Kloiber was Producer.

Brahms’ rousing Academic Festival Overture and Violin Concerto op. 77 bear witness to a composer at the height of his abilities, a mature master of large-scale masterpieces. The Violin Concerto demands extreme technical proficiency. As if to exemplify this, violinist Julia Fischer gears herself from the very start of this emotionally searing work to maintaining a restrained yet passionate tone.

Franz Welser-Möst conducts the Cleveland Orchestra live at Severance Hall, Cleveland, September, 2008. Also included is an introduction by Welser-Möst.