CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — The Cleveland Orchestra on Saturday offered a summer evening of musical storytelling that was alluring and colorful without excess.

Under the elegant and incisive direction of Elim Chan at Blossom Music Center, the program paired Maurice Ravel’s Shéhérazade with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in performances redolent of perfume and sonic splendor.

Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel’s birth, the opener was Shéhérazade , a 1903 song cycle with words by Tristan Klingsor, the pen name of French poet, painter, and composer Léon Leclère.

Together, Ravel and Klingsor shaped a work steeped in the “Orientalist” style of the Arabian Nights, emphasizing atmosphere over literal storytelling — an approach mirrored in this performance by soprano Christia

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