The Cleveland Orchestra comes to Hill Auditorium Tuesday, Feb. 1.

photo by Roger Mastroianni

Ah, winter. Ah, Cleveland. As in the Cleveland Orchestra.

Having been around Ann Arbor a long, long time listening to concerts, when I spied the great Cleveland Orchestra on the University Musical Society schedule Feb. 1, I immediately thought back to the 1995 season.

That year, when the Cleveland was in town for a February residency, it was only at the last hour — literally — that piano soloist Emanuel Ax managed to free himself from an East Coast blizzard to arrive at Hill Auditorium for the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1. Earlier in the day, the Cleveland had put out an all-points bulletin for a pianist to replace Ax — handily settling on then-University of Michigan Professor Anton Nel, who had the music in his fingers and his fingers near Hill. He impressed the Cleveland’s management so much that though he didn’t play that night, he was engaged to appear with them at a future date.

Well, there’s a concerto on the program the Cleveland, under Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, presents here Tuesday. It’s not Brahms, but rather Schumann, and the pianist isn’t Ax but rather Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who is touring the U.S. with the orchestra this season. So the good news is, if they make it, he should, too, and they’re all coming from Miami.

There’s more good news than that, of course. Item 1 might be the chance to hear Aimard, a performer whose technique and musicianship, in both classic and contemporary repertoire, should make this Schumann concerto exceptional. Item 2 might be the concerto itself, a partnership between piano and orchestra that allows both to shine in the manner Schumann envisioned as an ideal, with “the autocrat at the keyboard (revealing) the richness of his instrument and of his art, while the orchestra, more than a mere onlooker, with its many expressive capabilities adds to the artistic whole.”

(Note: Later on in February, when pianist Rafal Blechacz appears with the chamber ensemble Concertante for the Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1, UMS patrons will hear a concerto that adheres to a very different model, in which the piano is clearly king.)

Franz Welser-Most leads the Cleveland Orchestra.

photo by Roger Mastroianni

If Aimard, Schumann and the Cleveland are not sufficient lure, there is the rest of the program to entice.

It should be a treat to hear the Cleveland play Wagner’s “Overture to Tannhäuser,” a work of immense grandeur and power that has been a stand-alone orchestra favorite since its composition. And the journey from the Schumann concerto to the Wagner overture and then to the exhilaration and color of Bartok’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste” should make for exciting travel.

It may not be as on-the-edge-of-your-seat exciting as wondering if the soloist will make it to town, as happened in 1995, but that’s the kind of extra-musical drama we’ll be glad to forgo.