Don’t tell anyone, but Tuesday Musical, a Knight arts grantee, and The Cleveland Orchestra have been having an ongoing affair for nearly one hundred years. And their bond is as strong as ever.

The orchestra was founded in 1918, and records show, according to Barbara Feld, executive director of TM, that the orchestra first got together with the arts presenter in Akron in April 1919 at a Sunday matinee in the old Akron Armory. In those early years, records also show that Tuesday Musical often presented the orchestra twice in any given season. 

Now it’s a same time next year kind of thing, but the two are planning to hook up again next week.

Maestro Franz Welser-Möst will be conducting the orchestra in what is described as “a brilliant program that features two monumental works by Beethoven and Shostakovich” – Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 4” and Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 10”.

Franz Welser-Most. Photo by Roger Mastroianni

As program annotator Hugh Macdonald has noted, Beethoven’s Fourth “surpasses (Third and Fifth) in athletic energy and, in places, in sheer beauty of sound.” He added, “Be sure to listen for the solo clarinet, strings and first bassoon.” Word, too, is that this work is not often performed, at least not as often as the more popular Third, Fifth, and Ninth, so here’s a chance to be part of it all.

Shostakovich composed his great “Symphony No. 10” in secret, it has been learned, for several years following a purge of Soviet musicians that included the composer as a target. Maybe it had too much personal input, since it’s thought that musical notation mimics the spelling of the name of a woman he had fallen in love with. That sounds cool. Whatever, though, it is thought that this work has such ambiguity that with each performance new interpretations and understandings will appear. When The Cleveland Orchestra performs this significant work, Feld says, there most surely will be several more insightful interpretations offered.

The Cleveland Orchestra. Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Tuesday Musical will present The Cleveland Orchestra on Tuesday, January 15th at 7:30 p.m. in E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall, 198 Hill St., Akron; 330-972-7570; www.ejthomashall.com. Tickets cost $25-$45 (free for students).