Concert Review: A Folio of Femme Fatales

Jakub Hrůša returns to the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The in-demand Mr. Jakob Hrůša returned to the New York Philharmonic last week.
Photo by Andreas Herszau © 2018 Bamberger Symphoniker courtesy IMG Artists.

Rudyard Kipling once wrote that the female of the species is more deadly than the male. On Friday afternoon, conductor Jakub Hrůša tested that theory with a program of works by Janacek and Rimsky-Korsakov depicting females of cunning and wit. These orchestral showpieces flanked the Piano Concerto No. 3 of Serge Prokofiev, the most elegant, energetic and outré of the composer's five.

Concert Review: A Totalitarian Eclipse of the Heart

Jakob Hrůša leads the Cleveland Orchestra behind the Iron Curtain.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor Jakob Hrůša in action.Photo by Andreas Herszau from the artist's website © 2016 Andreas Herszau. 

The music of Eastern Europe in the mid-20th century was, for the most part written in an oppressive climate of fear and government control. On Thursday night at Severance Hall, conductor Jakob Hrůša and the Cleveland Orchestra took out their crowbars and lifted the Iron Curtain with a program that shed some light on what music-making was like in a totalitarian (and proletarian) regime.