Don Rosenberg (cleveland.com)

The Baltimore Sun reports today that Donald Rosenberg, longtime music critic of the Plain Dealer, and before that of the Beacon Journal, has been pulled off the Cleveland Orchestra beat. Another critic at the paper, Zachary Lewis, will be covering the orchestra’s concerts in the future.

Read more:

Cleveland critic who dared criticize is reassigned in the Baltimore Sun

Watch the second part of David Roden’s interview with Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Most as he prepares to conduct a program featuring Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” at the Blossom Festival on Friday, August 8th.

See all four parts of the interview:

Alice Chalifoux and her personal dressing room

If you heard the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center Sunday evening (3 August 2008), you heard the legacy of an extraordinary musician and human.

Cleveland Orchestra harpist Trina Struble shared with principal clarinet Franklin Cohen the solo duties in Cleveland-born composer Eric Ewazen’s Ballade. Struble was one of the hundreds of students nurtured by the orchestra’s harpist from 1931 to 1974, Alice Chalifoux. So was Telarc recording artist Yolanda Kondonassis.

Chalifoux died Thursday in Winchester, Virginia, at the age of 100.

Along with some of her students, Chalifoux appeared as part of the Music from Stan Hywet series. These programs were broadcast on WKSU during the 1980s. Of course, she also played in countless Cleveland Orchestra programs. As harpist under five music directors — Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodzinski, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell and Lorin Maazel — she made many broadcasts and recordings with the orchestra. Hers is the solo harp you hear on the 1967 Boulez recording of Debussy’s Danse sacree et profane.

For some years Chalifoux was the only female member of The Cleveland Orchestra. Faced with concert halls that had no facilities for women, she would use her harp case as a dressing room. By the time she retired in 1974, thirteen other women had joined her in the orchestra’s ranks.

Chalifoux’s teachers included the great Carlos Salzedo. She inherited his school and taught for years at the Salzedo Harp Colony in addition to the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Oberlin Conservatory, and Baldwin-Wallace.

She is survived by a daughter and a niece.

This weekend, the last person to hold the title of Blossom Festival Music Director returns to The Cleveland Orchestra’s summer home.

Jahja Ling ran the classical show at Blossom Music Center while he was also leading the Florida Orchestra, and before he moved on to direct the San Diego Symphony. WKSU’s Vivian Goodman spoke to the maestro at his Cleveland hotel, where he’s staying with his wife, pianist Jesse Chang.

Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Most recently sat down with WKSU’s David Roden to discuss the upcoming Blossom season and next weekend’s Severance Hall production of Dvorak’s opera, Rusalka. Look for more on Blossom later - in the meantime, here is Roden’s interview on Rusalka in 6 parts.

The Cleveland Orchestra will join such distinguished musicians as cellist Pablo Casals, composer Gian Carlo Menotti, and conductors Zubin Mehta, Michael Tilson Thomas, Lorin Maazel, and Andre Previn as members of the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.

The ACMHF is based in Cincinnati. Other inductees this year include cellist Yo-Yo Ma and composer Donald Martino (deceased).

The Miami Herald’s Lawence Johnson reports here that Christoph von Dohnanyi, music director of The Cleveland Orchestra for 18 years from 1984, will sweep through Miami on his farewell tour with The Philharmonia.

Dohnanyi rightly receives his due in Johnson’s piece: “… in many ways, the corporate tonal refinement and tightly disciplined ensemble are the legacy of the 78-year-old intellectual maestro who led the orchestra for almost two decades.”

Music Director Franz Welser-Moest inherited an orchestra at the peak of its game. We can - and should - thank Christoph von Dohnanyi for that. Let no one ever diminish the sheen of his legacy.

Yet it’s important to remember the deep origins of the Cleveland sound - notably, the chamber music precision and ensemble that are this orchestra’s hallmarks. Ironically, one could argue that we have one of history’s most nefarious dictators to thank for it. Had it not been for Adolph Hitler’s insanity and the nightmare of World War II, George Szell might not have emigrated to the US, or taken the helm of an orchestra in Cleveland, Ohio.

Franz Welser-Moest is building his own rewarding Cleveland musical legacy, just as Christoph von Dohnanyi did. For that we can be deeply grateful. But even though most of the musicians are now too young to have played under George Szell, his voice still sings softly from every chair on the Severance Hall stage. Northeast Ohio’s music lovers will never forget him, this Vienna-raised maestro who got the world talking about the unbeatable band in Cleveland.