Review: Cleveland Orchestra bids adieu to season with enchanting ‘An American in Paris’

Brett Mitchell conducts The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni)

CLEVELAND — The Plain Dealer has published a review of Brett Mitchell’s performances this weekend with The Cleveland Orchestra:

It’s got Gershwin. It’s got dancing. It’s got Mitchell. On a Cleveland Orchestra season finale, one couldn’t ask for anything more.

No weighty symphonies or concertos on this occasion. Instead, Thursday night at Severance Hall, the orchestra wrapped the year with a film: the award-winning 1951 classic “An American in Paris”….

Make no mistake: this was no walk in the park for the Cleveland Orchestra. For the audience, “An American in Paris” may have been a pleasant way to end a season, but for the orchestra and conductor, Colorado Symphony director (and former Cleveland associate conductor) Brett Mitchell, Thursday’s project entailed two solid hours of vigilant hard work lining up brisk music with the lips of singers and the feet of dancers in lavish tap and ballet numbers….

Nice. Wonderful. Marvelous. These players and their colleagues exemplified every one of the Gershwin brothers’ favorite adjectives. They again made it great to be a music-lover in Cleveland.

To read the complete review, please click here.