Name: Mo Willems’s Because
Start: 2026-05-03T15:00:00
Location: Severance Music Center

James Feddeck

The Cleveland Orchestra

The New York Times bestselling author and illustrator Mo Willems has created a powerful symphony of chance, discovery, persistence, and magic. Amber Ren's illustrations and Jessie Montgomery's music beautifully bring Willems' story to life, reminding us that sometimes the smallest moments have the biggest impact.

Mo Willems’s Because

Severance Music Center

Any concert featuring Portuguese grande dame Maria João Pires or Canadian virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin is a must-see event for piano lovers, and this blockbuster recital brings the two legends together to share top billing. Pires’s effortless elegance and crystal-clear tone provide a perfect complement to Hamelin’s astonishing technique as they set their storied talents on a variety of solo repertoire and duets.

Hamelin & Pires in Recital

The word “epic” could have been invented to describe the music of Götterdämmerung, the heaven-and-earth-shaking culmination of Wagner’s four-part Ring cycle, complete with vengeance, magic fire, and the redemptive power of love beyond death. Orchestral excerpts from this operatic thrill ride meld with the instantly charming neoclassicism of Prokofiev’s First Symphony and the US premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s Zones of Blue, a clarinet concerto performed by its dedicatee and longtime friend of The Cleveland Orchestra, Jörg Widmann.

Wagner’s Götterdämmerung

Franz Welser-Möst lifts The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus and an all-star cast of soloists to the life-affirming heights of Beethoven’s only opera, a testament to courage and human nobility. Motivated by a desire for justice during a time of European turmoil, Fidelio decries corruption and sounds a clarion call for freedom in a riveting story that asks the question: How far would you go to save someone you love?

Beethoven’s Fidelio

The fourth annual Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival wraps up as Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Dvořák’s Hero’s Song, a symphony in miniature that bears the composer’s distinctive style and irrepressible Bohemian spirit. Jüri Reinvere’s Concerto for Violin, Harp, and Orchestra receives its world premiere with virtuoso violinist Leila Josefowicz and TCO’s own Principal Harp Trina Struble alongside Bacewicz’s stormy Fourth Symphony and Adolphus Hailstork’s moving elegy for Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hero’s Song

Hosted and narrated by Matilda director and star Danny DeVito, the beloved modern fairytale comes to life on the big screen as David Newman conducts his enchanting score live-to-picture!