Mother Russia

This season's concerts at Severance Hall, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, seem to have a thread that carries over from one week to the next and for the most part, it's resulted in some grand performances and introduced some works rarely heard here. As is always the case, some fine guest conductors take the podium when Franz Welser-Möst is not in town. Pinchas Steinberg conducted the entire concert [Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, 18 October 2012] sans score and was a real audience favorite. I was told that he often speaks from the podium, but this evening he dove right into the program which opened with the orchestra's first full performance of the Suite from Le Coq d'Or ('The Golden Cockerel') by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov...