1998 – 1999
Subscription Week 1
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10
BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 83
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
Garrick Ohlsson, piano
Music's wit, sorrow, power soar in opener
There are orchestras that begin their new seasons by making spectacles of themselves. Not the Cleveland Orchestra, which opened its 81st season last night at Severance Hall by doing what it does best - making music. Pure and simple. No frills. No show.
Yet it was quite a show, for a number of salient reasons. Music director Christoph von Dohnanyi was on the podium to begin his 15th season at the orchestra's helm. The program bathed in contrasts by presenting works by two composers of very different sensibilities who nevertheless have much in common. The honours were undertaken by Shostakovich, in the form of his Symphony No. 1, and Brahms, whose Piano Concerto No. 2 was given a performance of limber sensitivity with Garrick Ohlsson as soloist.
Concertgoers who attended the opener not only were reminded that Cleveland possesses an orchestra of almost incomparable gifts. They were also reminded that the ensemble's home, Severance Hall, is in the midst of a $35 million renovation that will require a bit of patience on everyone's part until the orchestra moves downtown to the Allen Theatre in March. Getting into Severance takes slightly longer than usual the front steps are still closed - and there are signs of expansion and contraction all over the place. All of these distractions disappeared last night when Dohnanyi arrived onstage to conduct the Shostakovich.
What a delicious piece this remains. The Russian composer was all of 19 when he completed his Symphony No. 1, which bears many traces of great things to come even as it knocks you over with its breathtaking command of musical and orchestral resources. Shostakovich the sly wit is here already, as is Shostakovich the angry revolutionary and heartfelt nationalist. Music of aching beauty rubs shoulders with sarcastic screams and symphonic majesty of enormous power.
Dohnanyi is not one of those maestros who makes Shostakovich sound like a militia hungry for battle. He set the piece on a propulsive course in the first movement and emphasized its devilish humor and rhythmic point. Some of Shostakovich's wicked ideas fairly flew from the stage, especially in the Scherzo's whirling passages for strings and piano (in which keyboardist Joela Jones was a dervish of demonic panache). The slow movement, which is the work's heart, received a reading of such controlled expressivity that its tragedy was all the more shattering when Dohnanyi allowed the music to soar. The transition to the final movement, by way of a clever snare crescendo, was perfectly captured, leading us into the feverish brilliance that marks so much of Shostakovich's invention.
The playing ran the gamut from sleek beauty and biting majesty to lyric tenderness (lovely contributions by many principals) and rollicking exuberance. Linking Shostakovich with Brahms is no easy task, but pairing these particular works revealed some connections. Both four-movement pieces place the scherzos second and slow movements third. Both composers devoted themselves to symphonies and concertos. As played by Ohls- son, the Brahms Second Piano Concerto had much of the passion and muscular elegance that could be applied to a Shostakovich concerto.
The American pianist is a great bear of a fellow who appears capable of turning a concert grand into a pile of firewood. But he never resorts to harshness or willful gesture. In the Brahms, he rolled out the noblest sonorities as he gave poetic life to phrases and sent lines from the piano with utmost clarity. This was a keenly observant performance in which the relationship between piano and orchestra was preserved to magnificent effect. In the celestial passages where Brahms leans generously on his romantic side, Ohlsson was attentive to the rapturous motion within a flexible framework.
He provided silken nuances to the slow movement, which had golden cello solos by Stephen Geber, and Mendelssohnian grace to the quicksilver episodes of the finale. Brahms sounded vigorous and trim as offered by Ohlsson and his colleagues. Dohnanyi asked for warmth amid meticulous detail. He obtained it. There .was spectacle in the grandeur, but also in the intimacy.
Subscription Week 2
WEBERN Im Sommerwind, Idyll for Large Orchestra
MOZART Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola and orchestra in E flat
major, K. 364
DEBUSSY Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, for orchestra, L. 86
JANÁČEK Sinfonietta for orchestra, Op. 60
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
William Preucil, violin
Robert Vernon, viola
Musicians are skilled quick-change artists
How many different kinds of sounds and colors can an orchestra produce? Some of the answers are provided by the Cleveland Orchestra this week at Severance Hall. The ensemble's second program of the season is a veritable lexicon of styles to which music director Christoph von Dohnanyi and his players apply chameleonlike powers of sophistication. Last night's concert was a demonstration of Cleveland musicmaking on a stratospheric level, reflecting the orchestra's ability to switch gears with elegant ease and Dohnanyi's observant hand in shaping performances that fascinate and delight. The program jumped from Webern, back to Mozart, forward to Debussy and forward once again to Janacek, and it never sounded jarring. The conducting and the playing were keenly alert to matters of texture, detail and sonic shading.
Webern's "Im Sommerwind" opened the program in a hushed landscape full of warm breezes and playful gestures. Considering the radical path this composer later took, his early orchestral idyll is positively romantic in expressive quality and glowing orchestral writing. Dohnanyi emphasized the softest dynamics, as he does in the more economical Webern pieces, and achieved gorgeously controlled layerings and exultant outbursts. The violin solos were played with shimmering purity by Ellen dePasquale, a candidate for the post of associate concertmaster.
More instrumental finesse was in store when concertmaster William Preucil and principal violist Robert Vernon arrived to play Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364, with a greatly reduced ensemble. There can be no argument that this is one of Mozart's most sublime pieces, especially the second movement, which takes eloquence to new heights. The performance last night was not ideal in balance, a result of the positioning of the solo instruments. Vernon, with his beautiful dark chocolate timbre, sounded distant next to the silvery brilliance of Preucil's violin. Even so, their playing was so regal in gesture and seamless in connections that the music spoke in much of its Mozartean glory.
Preucil brought a hint of romantic zest to his lines, while Vernon maintained classical poise within flexible parameters. Dohnanyi kept the orchestra on a crisp course in the outer movements and in an urgently melancholic mood in the slow movement. Dohnanyi continued to switch gears when he came to Debussy's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun," which he unfolded as a spacious reverie that radiated much of the summery freshness that pervaded the Webern idyll. The delicate episodes were treated with ultra-silken care; the moments of rapture were passionate yet controlled. Few works in the orchestral repertoire perhaps could have stood in greater contrast to the Debussy than Janacek's Sinfonietta, which expands the resources of the orchestra to technicolor proportions.
The brass are called upon to emit fanfares of bountiful splendour, which the Cleveland contingent did last night to ear-filling effect. Hearing this orchestra play at its full, generous best is an experience that can hardly be matched in the international scheme of symphonic things. Let's keep our fingers crossed that the orchestra will still feel at home when the Severance renovation: is complete and the hall reopens in January 2000.
Subscription Week 3
IVES Central Park in the Dark
IVES Emerson Concerto for Piano and Orchestra,
recon David G Porter (World Premiere)
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 55 'Eroica'
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
Alan Feinberg, piano
Grandeur resonates in fusion of Beethoven, Ives
Putting Ludwig van Beethoven and Charles Ives on the same program would seem to be asking for BIG trouble. Here are two radicals who stretched the bounds of the sonic art in their time. The question is whether they will cancel each other out when placed in such close proximity.
They didn't last night at Severance Hall, where the composers sounded as audacious and feisty as ever in performances by the Cleveland Orchestra under music director Christoph von Dohnanyi. The major event of the night was the world premiere of Ives' "Emerson Concerto" for piano and orchestra, a work that melds numerous sources into a three movement reconstruction by David G. Porter.
With so many roots in other Ives pieces, the concerto can't be said to exert an original punch. Its materials come from such scores as the "Concord" Sonata for piano and other keyboard works that showed Ives to be a prime exponent of the avantgarde of the early decades of the 20th century. The piece is also an example of the composer gazing in every direction, looking forward where no other creative artist had gone and casting a nostalgic ear toward the core of his musical experience.
Chief among the influences is, yes, Beethoven, whose Fifth Symphony contributes several fateful gestures in the "Emerson Concerto." Along with such quota- tions are hints of tunes or sounds Ives knew when he was growing up. There are chimes to evoke the church landscapes of his Connecticut youth, wisps of delicate ideas reflecting the tender, even shy side of his nature, and massive blocks of sound layered on top of one another like so much musical lasagna.
The piece begins with a densely packed opening movement in which the pianist often assumes a fierce role, lavishing cluster upon cluster and rugged patterns that could depict Ives as a bold naturalist. The piece begins with a densely packed opening movement in which the pianist often assumes a fierce role, lavishing cluster upon cluster and rugged patterns that could depict Ives as a bold naturalist. As s the work unfolds, the music becomes contemplative, embracing lyrical utterances of winsome beauty. More cataclysmic notions are in store in the third movement, a typical soundscape of unpredictable Ivesian structures and expressive discourse.
The effect of the work is startling, sometimes elusive and always arresting. Commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra, it received what sounded like an authoritative performance last night, with pianist Alan Feinberg bringing strength of character and limb to the solo part. Feinberg specializes in scores thorny and lucid, and he was eminently successful in conveying the inner energy of a work that needs several hearings to reveal its myriad qualities. Dohnanyi and the orchestra were splendid in defining the almost undefinable and balancing their efforts so the piano could be heard.
Ives of much more intimate sensibility opened the program, which will be repeated at 8:30 tonight and tomorrow and 3 p.m. Sunday. "Central Park in the Dark" is a glowing piece in which the composer shares sounds of an urban night using two orchestras and two conductors. Chorales are played over and over by the strings, while the winds, brasses and percussion (including pianos, most definitely) give us rousing choruses of "'Hello! Ma Baby.' Dohnanyi did the slow honors and assistant conductor Steven Smith brought the exuberant forces to the fore when necessary. It all sounded quite magical.
Beethoven, by the way, was not overwhelmed by the presence of his 20th century colleague. To end the program, Dohnanyi offered a performance of the Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica") that reminded us why the work must have set audiences of the early 19th century on their ear and continues to do so.
Nothing about this "Eroica" sounded prepackaged or conventional. Dohnanyi not only allowed the jolts to emerge, he emphasized the revolutionary aspects by asking for extremes of dynamics, pointing out accents, keeping the harmonic surprises. in check and defining the textural requirements with superb control.
The orchestra responded as it has throughout the first three. weeks of the season for its boss. The musicians sat up, articulated; like mad and demonstrated prodigious powers of finesse and grandeur.
Everything inside the score could be heard. But it was the impact of the totality that made this performance one of eloquent and, forceful magnificence.
Preceding the concert, Musical Arts Association chairman Ward Smith received the third Cleveland Orchestra Distinguished Service Award from Richard Bogomolny, the association's president..
Subscription Week 4
WAGNER Tristan und Isolde, Prelude Act 1
LUTOSLAWSKI Cello Concerto
WAGNER Parsifal, Prelude Act 1
SCHUMANN Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Clemens Hagen, cello
Guest conductor presides over spotty affair
Franz Welser-Moest has had Cleveland Orchestra many successes with the Cleveland Orchestra in the five years he has appeared as guest conductor. The Austrian conductor is here for three weeks, which means he may have more success during his second and third programs.
His first program of the season with, the orchestra last night at Severance Hall was an extremely spotty affair in which most of the performances couldn't be recommended. The purely orchestral pieces by Wagner and Schumann were the unhappy recipients on this occasion. Only Witold Lutoslawski's Cello Concerto made a striking impression, due partly to the music and partly to the soloist, Austrian cellist Clemens Hagen, who was making his debut with the orchestra.
Lutoslawski, who died in 1994, -was an experimental composer who had a keen ear for instrumental devices and new musical techniques of unusual effectiveness. His 1970 Cello Concerto not only shows the solo instrument in an intriguing light, it also contains music of fascinating colour and expressive urgency. The cello is cast as isolated protagonist, going its own way in the extended opening section on repeated notes, slides and quirky gestures, and often sparring with the orchestra.
What makes the concerto such a mesmerizing creation is its multiplicity of sounds and moods. There is ample anger but also poighancy and courageousness. On a purely sonic level, the work is an anthology of possibilities. The Polish composer had a knack for combining instrumental colors in uncommon shadings, and the results can be surprising. Some of the curiosity arrives by chance in passages in which Lutoslawski provides patterns that the soloist and orchestral players execute in free fashion.
But the concerto is more than a series of inventive fragments amid orchestral inventiveness. Its solo part is a psychological adventure in which numerous questions are posed and answered, conversations are begun and cut off, and extremes of character are set forth. In all of this, Hagen was superlative.
The quizzical moments in the concerto received fervent definition by Hagen, whose sound was penetrating when necessary but also rapturously poetic at requisite moments. He was fantastically secure in every range of the instrument, especially in the stratospheric lines that end the work. Hagen was inspired in clarifying Lutoslawski's sweeping and pointillistic gestures, and he worked closely with Welser-Moest and the orchestra, which chattered and shimmered with utmost urgency.
Why Welser-Moest was so bland and diffuse in the remainder of the program is a mystery. He conducted the preludes to Wagner's "Tristan' und Isolde" and "Parsifal" in so listless a fashion that the grandeur of both scores rarely was tapped. In the "Tristan" prelude, he didn't heed the composer's request to maintain a steady tempo throughout, and he drew some uncharacteristically imprecise and tentative playing from the orchestra. The "Parsifal" prelude unfolded as a series of vague events, with attacks that often weren't unanimous and playing that lacked breadth. It was all too loosely organized, minus the sonic glow so crucial to Wagner.
Any hopes that Welser-Moest would awaken and make stellar use of the orchestra after intermission were dashed once he set himself to Schumann's Symphony No. 2. The performance was one of misguided contrast: It was either so subdued that the music's lyricism was nullified or it was so hasty that Schumann never had a chance to exert his voice with clarity and balance.
The Adagio espressivo is arguably Schumann's greatest symphonic slow movement, but Welser-Moest held back the poetic beauty until the phrases almost expired. In the fast movements, articulations were smoothed out so the classical edges couldn't emerge. The Cleveland Orchestra has been a superior advocate for Schumann for many decades. Last night, it sounded neither distinctive nor special in this music.
The program is repeated at 8:30 tonight and tomorrow.
Subscription Week 5
ROUSE The Infernal Machine
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73, 'Emperor'
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Rudolf Buchbinder, piano
Virtuosity combined with sensitivity
The pleasure of listening to great music sometimes revolves around the ability of the performers to show us how virtuosic they can be. Then there are artists who impress us through sheer sensitivity and stylishness.
Both of these are available during this week's Cleveland Orchestra concert at Severance Hall, where works by Christopher Rouse, Beethoven and Shostakovich share a varied bill. Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Moest is back to lead his second consecutive subscription program, and another Austrian guest, who wasn't originally scheduled, quietly steals the show.
His name is Rudolf Buch.binder, who last appeared with the orchestra in 1986 and here was replacing the indisposed Krystian Zimerman. Buchbinder's vehicle last night was Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5, known as the "Emperor." The work's subtitle, like many of its ilk, can be misconstrued. In this case, it is meant to suggest the majestic and noble qualities that pervade the score. Many pianists use it as a license for unidiomatic grandeur and posturing.
Not Buchbinder, who let us know from the opening he was interested in the work's arching shapes rather than any false loftiness. As he unfolded phrases, the pianist revealed the architectural designs that crystallize so perfectly and lead from one event to the next. Here was playing of heightened clarity and nuance.
When he came to the slow movement, Buchbinder held the lines together as if they were refined pearls. He brought a lovely expressivity to the movement's stop-time simplicity, etching statements with an ear toward intimacy and controlled beauty. The transition to the finale was startling in the right sense of the word: Buchbinder held the motion almost at a standstill until he dove headlong into the last movement’s rollicking escapades.
The clarity of rhythm and texture the pianist achieved helped to bring Beethoven's vitality into crisp focus. He balanced refinement with personality, and he collaborated with Welser-Moest and the orchestra with the ear of a keen chamber musician. Adjustments were needed to place the winds in relief to the strings and piano, but Beethoven's spirit was preserved and embraced.
The program, to be repeated at 8:30 p.m. tomorrow, began and ended in the 20th century. Rouse's "'The Infernal Machine" the next. is a clever bit of orchestral showmanship in which pinpoint definition of the mechanism's inner workings must be achieved. Welser-Moest, who looks elegant on the podium but often isn't technically specific enough with this orchestra, gave the piece an assembly-line reading of no real character. Where Rouse can be impish or diabolical, the conductor was dry and humorless. It was less infernal than insipid.
Shostakovich was represented not by one of his smash-hit symphonies but by Symphony No. 6, a work that claims many moods and psychological contrasts. The opening Largo is a soundscape of almost complete desolation, possibly a commentary by the composer on his country's moral and political state in 1939, the year he wrote the piece. Following this moving utterance, Shostakovich heads into more unrestrained territory, through mysterious whirlwinds (Allegro) and biting statements (Presto) that drip sarcasm and defiance.
Welser-Moest took Shostakovich at his word. This was neither a performance of blinding intensity nor one in which matters of orchestral ensemble were necessarily tidy. The opening movement sounded episodic - though it had gorgeous flute playing - and the quick movements were rhythmically loose, not to mention noisy. Welser-Moest generated sufficient tension and energy only by the last movement, when the orchestra pulled itself together, made a gleeful dash for the finish and wound things up in a flourish of sonic triumph. Quite a sound it was.
Subscription Week 6
HAYDN The Seasons, oratorio, Hob. XXI:3
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Barbara Bonney, soprano
Scot Weir, tenor
David Wilson-Johnson, bass-baritone
Cleveland Chorus
Haydn's 'The Seasons' returns on a bright and sunny note
A generation of seasons has gone by since the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus performed Haydn's "The Seasons," too long a hiatus for a work of such extroverted beauty. The oratorio's subject is certainly familiar to residents of Northeast Ohio. It is Haydn's sunny music, however, that warms our ears, even in the dead of the movement titled "Winter."
This week's performances of "The Seasons" in Severance Hall under guest conductor Franz Welser-Moest are noteworthy in several respects beyond the work's emergence from hibernation. Thursday night, the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus made its first appearance as prepared by new director of choruses Robert Porco, and the results were impressive. The evening also held the Cleveland Orchestra debut of American soprano Barbara Bonney, who should be convinced to take up residence here whenever a voice of pinpoint radiance is required.
"The Seasons" is Haydn's sequel to another oratorio, "The Creation." While the pieces bear resemblance in genius for capturing miniature scenes in resplendent music, they are almost polar opposites in terms of mood. "The Creation" (1798) is a great dramatic scenario. "'The Seasons," written three years later, finds Haydn largely in mellow frame of mind, eager to convey his love of nature in sounds bucolic and robust. In terms of tone painting, few composers are as subtle as the Austrian master. Welser-Moest brought a chipper sense of motion to the various sections of "'The Seasons." He didn't always elicit precision from the orchestra, and there were moments of loose ensemble that worked against Haydn's classical vitality. But the general shapes of the score received affectionate treatment, and the delectable instrumental details whimsical wind interjections, percussive rumblings of wintry storms, gleeful hunting horns in stereophonic placement transformed Severance into a glowing landscape.
The use of a fortepiano, played by Joela Jones, added stylistic finesse to the continuo sections, in which Stephen Geber was the discreet cellist. Hearing this ensemble play Haydn is a reminder that the composer once was a foundation of the repertoire at Severance.
The chorus in "The Seasons" is called upon to exude communal exuberance much of the time, and the Cleveland ensemble was confident at every turn of phrase. The choristers produced a forward sound that was fine in blend, enunciation and balance. They were alert in the fugal duties and buoyant when Haydn sent them up and down his tonal hills and valleys.
Now, about Bonney: Singing the role of Hanne, the soprano gave lessons in the art of vocal communication. Everything Bonney projected was marked by vivid characterization and artistic delight. Her bright timbre, with its shimmering vibrato, emerged with crystalline clarity even when textures assumed grand proportions. Here was singing of charm, delicacy and agility on a level rarely encountered. Bonney's colleagues also were distinguished. Scot Weir, as Lukas, was supremely sensitive to the expressive demands of his music. He molded the delicate lines with a tenor of utmost refinement and agility. Bass-baritone David Wilson-Johnson sounded like a cross between Papageno and Hans Sachs as Simon, blending genial humor with sonorous wisdom. Considering that "The Seasons" last blew through Severance during the orchestra’s 1965-1966 season, it is indeed welcome that the piece has returned in such engaging form. The final performance is at 8:30 tonight.
Subscription Week 7
DEBUSSY Images (3), for orchestra, L. 122
NIELSEN Flute Concerto
BARTOK Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz 106
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor
Joshua Smith, flute
Guest conductor brings Severance his fresh outlook
Esa-Pekka Salonen has gone far since he made his debut as guest conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1989. The Finnish conductor took up the music directorship of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1992 and since then has won admiration for forward-looking programming and interpretive confidence, especially in music of the 20th century. Salonen returned to Severance Hall last night to lead the Cleveland Orchestra in a program of music that travels slightly off the beaten path but can hardly be considered unconventional. Although all of the works hail from the 20th century, they are sufficiently mature - the most recent was composed in 1936 - to be called old music. As shaped by Salonen, each piece sounded as fresh and vital as it must have when it first entered an audience's ears decades ago.
Never mind that the conductor initially looks like a graduate student who happened upon a fine set of tails. Salonen is a musician of brilliant ability and technical assurance. He has a keen sense of texture, rhythmic motion and inner detail - qualities that mesh beautifully with the orchestra that resides at Severance. In terms of clarity and color, Salonen already is something of a master. : His experience as a composer also makes him aware of the building blocks of music, of which his program this week is replete with structural challenges. Salonen opens with Debussy's "Images," a collection of works often performed as separate entities, especially the three movements of "Iberia." These are tableaux of impressionistic beauty and atmosphere that require special handling of instrumental mixes and nuances. The collection also contains ample delicacy to trip up both conductor and players, as well as bursts of shadings that must be gauged with unusual care. Salonen brought an organic flow to each section of "Images," setting the minute thematic strands on a purposeful course and invigorating Debussy's swirling, vivid figurations. It was almost possible to smell the fragrant air in the second movement of "Iberia," so sensuous and magical were the sonorities Salonen and the orchestra sent from the stage.
Virtually every subtlety in these tonal paintings was conveyed with extraordinary lucidity. The aura lightened a bit when Carl Nielsen's Flute Concerto arrived with principal flutist Joshua Smith as soloist. The Danish composer is finally receiving the attention he deserves, in large part because his music is so appealing and quirky. The Flute Concerto abounds in playful gestures, which give way briefly to lyricism of bountiful tenderness and a certain soloistic defiance when a recalcitrant trombone tries to tell the flute which way is right. Smith was alert to every twist of phrase and temperament.
His sound was penetrating when Nielsen asks for dashing character and warmly poetic when the composer turns up the expressive heat. Smith's fluency and brio were matched inside the orchestra by two other soloists, clarinetist Franklin Cohen and trombonist Thomas Klaber. Salonen was attentive to the score's zest and honey. The program, which is repeated at 8:30 tonight and tomorrow and 3 p.m. Sunday, attains an aura of mysterious intensity and exuberance when the collaborators turn to Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.
Here is a work of novel genius in which colors, forms and emotions are conveyed through divided string sections and subtle use of percussion instruments. Salonen evoked the otherworldly aspects of the score to chilling effect in the slow movements and discovered the Hungarian muscles in the quicker, folk-inflected episodes. Rhythms snapped, phrases grew with almost imperceptible inevitability and textures were utterly transparent. The musicians responded in finest Cleveland manner -refinement matched by articulate speech. Joela Jones was the crisp pianist; Carolyn Gadiel Warner made shimmering work of the celesta part.
We've heard how meticulous and sensitive Salonen can be in music of the 20th century. Now we should hear him in Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms. .
Subscription Week 8
GUBAIDULINA Viola Concerto
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93
Jahja Ling, conductor
Yuri Bashmet, viola
Mix of concerto, symphony is potent
An orchestral program that contains a concerto and a symphony may seem oh-so-predictable at the end of the 20th century. Not, however, when the pieces in question burst the seams of conventional forms and expressive devices.
Cleveland Orchestra and resident conductor Jahja Ling took up two Russian works of forceful and individual personality last night at Severance Hall. The scores have many things in common, but also aspects that couldn't be further apart in intention, coloration or concept. Sofia Gubaidulina's Viola Concerto, in its Cleveland premiere with Yuri Bashmet, as the eloquent soloist, is a piece of introspective beauty in which the orchestra usually serves as observer, not participant. There also are moments of pensive longing in Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10. Yet here the composer explores the full capacity of the modern symphony orchestra, to say the least.
Gubaidulina goes somewhat against type in her concerto, which received its premiere by Bashmet and the Chicago Symphony last year. The emphasis is on stillness and contemplation, with the solo viola assuming the bulk of the brooding narrative. Exploiting the tonal depth and somewhat austere character that the viola possesses, the concerto is an extended monologue in which the soloist utters minute statements in all registers and reveals its vast potential to set forth myriad shadings and poetic sighs.
The spectrum of sounds Gubaidulina achieves is partly a matter of contrast. A quartet of violin, viola, cello and bass (seated stage right) is tuned slightly below the rest of the orchestra, providing jolting dissonances whenever it asserts itself in attempts to silence the soloist. But the viola perseveres, rising and falling, playing on the bridge or executing trills with whispered resolve. The music is often so quiet that the orchestra is used either not at all or to delicate effect.
While the piece could evoke an aura of sustained gloominess, it does nothing of the sort by way of Gubaidulina's lyrical subtlety and sonic surprises. Three Wagner tubas add chorale like dignity to the textures; percussion are employed to extraordinarily nuanced degree. The stillness is dispelled en route in moments of shattering intensity, but the work imposes its will through understatement and hopeful gesture.
Bashmet, to whom the work is dedicated, brought a keen sense of expressive restraint and heroic refinement to the score that sent the solo viola lines soaring. His sound was enormous and full when the music called for it. What mostly remains in the memory is the tenderness and lyrical calm he afforded much of the solo writing.
Ling and the orchestra were patient, controlled collaborators. The audience seemed to take a breath at the beginning and not exhale until the piece ended 35 minutes later.
The program, which will be repeated at 8:30 tonight and tomorrow, drew a barrage of coughs during the second half, when the musicians turned to the Shostakovich Tenth. Nothing about this symphony, or this performance deserves such treatment. Written in the early 1950s, the score is an expansive and heartfelt evocation of the composer as romantic, sarcastic commentator and whimsical spirit.
Ling stepped inside the work and pointed out the salient features with expert grasp of the hushed statements and nasty qualities. The performance claimed mournful grace and vehement attack in equal proportion. In the first movement, the solo clarinet and bassoon lines sang with brooding nobility. When Ling turned up the heat, the orchestra roared in a voice that might even have surprised Shostakovich.. It was a potent experience..
Subscription Week 9
TCHAIKOVSKY Variation d'Aurore and Entr'acte - Act III, The Sleeping Beauty
(arr. Stravinsky)
TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23
BRIGHT SHENG China Dreams, for orchestra
STRAVINSKY The Firebird, concert suite (1919)
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
Tzimon Barto, piano
In erratic show, 'Dreams' followed by rude awakening
The journey is glorious (briefly) and perilous (predominantly) this week at Severance Hall, where the Cleveland Orchestra is playing the first program in Christoph Eschenbach's two-week engagement as guest conductor. Eschenbach, a frequent visitor to the orchestra's podium, presided last night over a lineup that looked enticing on paper but turned out to be a highly erratic in reality.
There was an abundance of colorful music, including favorite pieces by Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, plus several rarely heard works. The night's premiere, at least partly, was Bright Sheng's "China Dreams," the first movement of which Eschenbach and the orchestra performed two years ago. The remaining three movements are wonderful additions, providing a cross-cultural view of Eastern and Western music by a composer of enormous expressive and sonic skill.
"China Dreams" makes use of numerous stylistic elements of Chinese music, including pentatonic scales, sliding figures and majestic dissonances. Sheng incorporates these ideas into four tableaux that reflect Chinese life from long ago and in recent times. His command of the orchestra is such that the pungent mixes of sound always emerge out of the dramatic context. There is power and poetry, as well as sensuous beauty.
It is a fierce challenge for the orchestra, both in terms of rhythm and range. Sheng employs ornamental devices that conjure up Chinese rituals or hints of nature. Eschenbach brought fine intensity, clamor and lyrical flexibility to the score. The orchestra unfolded Sheng's spectrum of colors with utmost vibrancy and sometimes piercing vehemence. This is an impressive and moving work that collects diverse strands and weaves them into a probing tapestry.
The other wonder of this program is concertmaster William Preucil, who has a generous chance to radiate his special brand of violinistic sensitivity and dashing personality in the Entr'acte from Tchaikovsky's "The Sleeping Beauty," performed in an arrangement by Stravinsky. The violin solo is almost of concerto proportions, ranging from ravishing lyricism to Gypsylike virtuosity. Preucil made a tour de force of the excerpt, pouring his silvery tone over the music and bringing purposeful nuance and heroism to the duties. Eschenbach supplied discreet support in this excerpt and the Variation d'Aurore, a modest selection marked by typical Tchaikovskian charm.
Otherwise, the news from Severance Hall isn't very good. Tchaikovsky also shows up in the form of the Piano Concerto No. 1, among his most popular works, but a score that can be transformed into a circus in the wrong hands. The hands last night belonged to Tzimon Barto, a hulking fellow who treated the concerto more as an athletic event than a musical event.
Barto tore into the work with robotic insistence, turning the octaves into brittle battles and overpowering the orchestra at every opportunity. The performance was highly idiosyncratic, full of extremes of dynamics and articulation, phrases that were pulled out of shape, and passages that virtually were unrelated to what was happening in the orchestra.
The demonic quality of much of Barto's playing was balanced by a certain preciousness during which lines disappeared or became indecipherable. Power is no problem for this pianist. Shaping phrases with inevitability appears to be. Why Eschenbach allowed his soloist to get away with the indignities is a mystery, as was his own penchant for heavy accents and general orchestral overkill. Duty demands I report that many listeners evidently found the performance entrancing. A number of Eschenbach's previous performances with the Cleveland Orchestra possessed bountiful electricity and tenderness, which have augured well for Stravinsky's "Firebird" suite.
But last night's account of the favorite ballet score was oddly mannered, beginning in the land of the ponderous and winding up as a cinematic spectacle. Little in the performance sounded spontaneous or flowing. Several solos were played with consummate taste, and the forceful personality of the orchestra could be thrilling. Mostly, this "Firebird" remained oddly earthbound. The program is repeated at 8:30 p.m.
Subscription Week 10
BARBER Knoxville, Summer of 1915
MAHLER Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
Sylvia McNair, soprano
Conductor's heavy-handed approach to Mahler fails
The Mahler police didn't appear to be patrolling Severance Hall Wednesday night. If they had, they would have been obligated to pull guest conductor Christoph Eschenbach over to the side of the stage and cite him for crimes against Mahler's Symphony No. 5. In ways far too numerous to mention, Eschenbach's performance of the Fifth Symphony with the Cleveland Orchestra was an outrageous example of interpretive willfulness. Lorin Maazel rose to such stupefying heights on occasion when he was at the ensemble's helm. Leonard Bernstein, who was known to take Mahler to the emotional brink, must be jumping up and down on his celestial podium.
Eschenbach has brought electricity and quirkiness here before, but never to such extremes. In the Fifth Symphony, he amplified and exaggerated the markings in Mahler's score to the point where the music sounded like a series of bloated or mopey effects. The composer can be neurotic in this respect, but he is also specific in terms of detail, dynamics and structure.
The Fifth Symphony, granted, is no easy nut to crack. It moves from two funereal movements to more jocular and tender ground before winding up with a finale of unbuttoned glee. In Eschenbach's hands, the darkness was emphasized to the virtual exclusion of delicacy, charm or bona fide buoyancy. Only in the last movement did he approach something on the order of Mahlerian truth. But even here, as elsewhere, the music was pulled and stretched and assaulted.
Eschenbach didn't seem to trust Mahler or the Cleveland musicians. He maintained rigid control over every phrase, often slowing down at cadences (which became predictable), while providing surprising and idiosyncratic nuances that obscured any sense of line or continuity. The performance came close to standing still in the famous Adagietto, which recent scholarship has shown was Mahler's love song to his wife, Alma. Eschenbach did things the old-fashioned way: He lingered and lingered, holding onto phrases for dear life and pressing the strings and harp virtually to turn blue in the face. This tendency to make the orchestra work harder than necessary resulted in Mahler totally out of proportion to what the composer wrote.
The players were marvelously responsive, giving Eschenbach mountains or wisps of sound, and they negotiated the conductor's strange, jerky gestures as if riding a Grand Prix course. But the performance was too apt for the holiday week. As turkeys go, it was enormous. The program, to be repeated at 8:30 tonight and tomorrow, is a hapless lesson in contrast. Where Eschenbach's Mahler was overcooked, his conducting of Samuel Barber's "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" lacked flavor and affection.
Part of the problem was soprano Sylvia McNair, a lovely artist who sounded miscast in this glowing and nostalgic score. McNair originally was scheduled to sing Strauss' "Four Last Songs" but withdrew from the work for personal reasons. In the Barber, she floated lines with such tasteful correctness that the text's homespun inflections were rendered colorless. "Knoxville" is one of those pieces you want to wrap your arms around. As conducted by Eschenbach and sung by McNair, it was like a relative you can never really love.
Subscription Week 11
MATTHUS Night Scene in the Park
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
Christian Thielemann, conductor
Leif-Ove Andsnes, piano
Norwegian pianist proves a marvel
What exquisite music-making went on last night at Severance Hall. What enigmatic music-making went on last night at Severance Hall. Both of these experiences were available at the same Cleveland Orchestra concert, thanks (exquisitely) to Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and (enigmatically) to German conductor Christian Thielemann. The occasion marked Thielemann's debut with the orchestra, and it cannot be said that the program of works by Siegfried Matthus, Mozart and Beethoven was uneventful. There were many moments when too much occurred for the music's good, and the orchestra had quite a time maintaining its fabled refinement.
Let's begin with Andsnes, who was a marvel in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20. Here was playing of impeccable taste, grace and discipline in which every detail sounded etched in gold. Mozart is alternately tragic and dreamy in this concerto, and the pianist must be attentive to stark contrasts without going beyond the score's classical temperament.
Andsnes had everything beautifully in hand (and feet, avoiding the pedal most of the time). He brought a serene sense of line and wondrous evenness of phrasing to Mozart's heavenly ideas. Articulations were clear, figurations worked out to the minutest detail and the grandest flourishes placed vibrantly into context.
The performance also showed the pianist embracing the style by embellishing lavishingly, yet always with an ear toward shape and focus. Andsnes played the cadenzas as dramatic interludes somewhat extravagant in personality yet splendid in intensity. Mozart emerged in ravishing form.
Thielemann had other notions about the composer. He was attentive to his soloist, but far more demonstrative in musical and physical terms than he needed to be for this score (and this orchestra, for that matter). Virtually every phrase was underlined by a theatrical gesture that distracted from the pianist's artistry. He jumped, he crouched, he pleaded. But then, with Mozart finished, Andsnes returned to play Brahms' Intermezzo, Op. 117, and cast another spell over the proceedings. The pianist brought remarkable restraint and poetry to this miniature, finding utmost tenderness in the hushed writing and exerting phenomenal control.
The evening opened with Matthus' "Night Scene in the Park," a gorgeous tableau drawn from the composer's opera "Count Mirabeau." The music has the aura of a fantasy, with mysterious and glistening sonorities in the celesta and bells and a soaring horn solo (lovingly played by Richard King) that frames the activity. Thielemann, general music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, showed himself to be a true man of the theater, unfolding the piece, for all its atmosphere and passion. Once again, he showed more to the orchestra and the audience than was warranted. For sheer suspense, however, nothing compared to his performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 at evening's end. It was impossible to tell what Thielemann would do next.
His account was expansive, malleable, expressionistic and more, taking Beethoven out of the classical era and placing him in another world altogether. This wasn't a routine view of the Fifth Symphony, by any means. But Thielemann was so highly individual and often bizarre in shaping, accenting and balancing that the sudden lurches, drops to whispers, underlining of bass lines and extremities of tempo often provided the feeling of a very rough sea voyage. Thielemann turned Beethoven's Fifth into a rugged thriller, albeit, one with far too many strands left unraveled.
Subscription Week 12
SCHNITTKE (K)ein Sommernachtstraum
BARTÓK The Miraculous Mandarin, Suite, Sz 73
SCHUBERT Symphony No. 9 in C major, D944, 'Great'
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
Prime Schubert, Prime Dohnanyi, Prime Cleveland
So that's what the Cleveland Orchestra really sounds like. After three months of frustrating and often bizarre musical activity, reason and authority were restored to Severance Hall last night when Music Director Christoph von Dohnanyi returned, not a moment too soon, to lead his ensemble back to glory. The year may be only 8 days old, but the orchestra already has had a string of triumphs. Earlier this week, Dohnanyi and his musicians were nominated for a Grammy for their recording of works by Ives and Ruggles. Last night's concert confirmed how supremely matched these artists are.
The program ran the gamut of styles, starting in the late 20th century (well, almost, as will be clear in due course), moving backward to the early 20th century and then hopping further to the first part of the 19th century. Dohnanyi and the orchestra provided the biggest thrill at evening's end with a performance o of Schubert's Symphony in C major, known as "The Great," that lived up to its subtitle. Much has been written about the expansive nature of this work, which indeed can seem interminable if the conductor is in the mood for a leisurely stroll through a Viennese park.
Not Dohnanyi. From the opening theme, he sent Schubert on a vigorous walk, avoiding the traps of ponderousness and invigorating every phrase.,
The first movement had a taut, muscular vitality that gave crisp focus to the architectural grandeur.
Never heavy or emphatic, Dohnanyi stressed the featherweight textures and thematic delicacy, while allowing the majesty to emerge within context.
The remainder of the performance followed suit. There was remarkable attention to phrasing and detail, and tempos received enough flexible handling to allow the music to sing or move ahead as needed. For all the C major Symphony's supposed lengthiness, Dohnanyi's account went by in such eventful fashion that the piece retained its beauty and intensity and never once stood still.
Orchestrally, it was a dumbfounding experience. The Cleveland musicians were so immersed in the narrative, aware of one another's place in the scheme of things and quick to heed Dohnanyi in terms of balance and energy that the score evinced the pristine, gleaming character it should possess, but only rarely does.
Prime Dohnanyi. Prime Cleveland.
The program, which is destined to bowl over audiences in Europe in several weeks, begins with Alfred Schnittke's "[K]ein sommernachtstraum," or "[N]ot a midsummer night's dream."
The late Russian composer is either being terribly subversive or simply playful in this enchanting piece, whose opening violin-piano and flute-harpsichord gestures are pure - or so we are led to believe - Mozart.
What transpires is an irreverent reworking of classical ideas.
The "Mozart" theme undergoes numerous surprising transformations, even venturing into circus-march territory.
It's an ingenious amalgam of styles to which Dohnanyi and the orchestra brought infinite charm and sonorous appeal.
"Charm" is not a word that can be applied to Bartok's suite from "The Miraculous Mandarin," but "spectacular" will do.
The pantomime about thieves, a prostitute and a Mandarin who won't die is a blaze of orchestral virtuosity full of lascivious, violent and insinuating materials. Dohnanyi keeps tight reigns on the more unseemly aspects of the score until Bartok demands that all hell break loose. A more elegant and bracing "Miraculous Mandarin" you are unlikely to encounter. And don't be too shocked by Franklin Cohen's fabulously come-hither clarinet solos: Is it any wonder the Mandarin temporarily is drawn into this debauched world?
Subscription Week 13
BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61
STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
Frank Peter Zimmermann, violin
Pairing of Beethoven, Stravinsky lays out banquet of magical music
One is a sublime and regal utterance, the other a cataclysmic primal scream. What could these works be doing on the same program? Linking the two composers as radicals of their time, perhaps, or simply providing extreme contrast on a program that brings together brilliant artists.
Whatever the motivation for pairing Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring," the Cleveland Orchestra's concert under music director Christoph von Dohnanyi last night at Severance Hall was a banquet of magical music making. The soloist in the Beethoven was German violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann, whose aristocratic sweetness. brought the concerto into radiant focus. The Stravinsky mared Dohnanyi's first outing with this explosive piece in Cleveland, and the performance once again underlined the potent partnership between conductor and orchestra.
Beethoven and Stravinsky exist in different worlds, of course, and Zimmermann's account of the concerto almost went out of its noble way to heighten the music's *classic beauty. Virtuosity is essentially beside the point here. Instead, the violinist must probe Beethoven's mind and sustain the score's lyrical core. Zimmermann lacks nothing in terms of violinistic ability, but he is unobtrusive in the best sense of the word, which means expressivity comes first, dazzlement later.
Zimmermann makes every effort to shape Beethoven's phrases for all their poetic worth. He achieves this through keen definition of rhythmic figures, dead-center intonation and beguiling tonal resources that change subtly to suit details and linear motion. In the first movement, where Beethoven begins to soar on an exalted level, Zimmermann unfolded the narrative with magisterial poise and intensity. He let the music unfold in all its inevitable calm, yet with an inner urgency that set the piece in forward motion.
Zimmermann's first-movement cadenza was almost a summary of orchestral devices, without drawing attention away from the thematic interest. When he moved to the second movement, the world's ills seemed to fall away, so sensitive, hushed and patient was the playing. And the finale couldn't have been more playful in its quietly majestic way.
The collaboration between soloist, conductor and orchestra had a few differences of opinion in terms of tempo, but these matters should settle as these artists continue to live with the work here and on their European tour over the next two weeks. Dohnanyi balanced the orchestra so the solo line could always be heard. The ensemble effort was resplendent in the crystalline classical manner that is a Cleveland trademark.
Considering that Dohnanyi had never conducted "The Rite of Spring" here, it was a major mystery as to how he would treat one of the 20th century's mega-masterpieces. Stravinsky altered the sonic landscape for all time in this pagan work, which claims page after page of innovations in motivic variation, rhythmic surprises and instrumental combination.
Some conductors view "The Rite" as a blueprint of effects, others as a means of demonstrating their theatrical flair. Dohnanyi brings these elements together in an absorbing whole, clarifying textures with remarkable transparency, revealing the bubbling, ominous nuances and creating a nervous dramatic aura that keeps the piece on a propulsive course from the opening bassoon entreaty (played with insinuating vibrancy by John Clouser) to shocking final thrust.
Hearing this orchestra respond so forcefully, and with such brilliant attention to Stravinsky's vast coloristic palette, is an experience that enchants the ears and rattles the bones. There are minute rhythmic matters that need polish, but Dohnanyi's "Rite" has the stamp of magnificence.
Subscription Week 14
BARBER Adagio for Strings, Op. 11
CORIGLIANO Violin Concerto, 'The Red Violin'
WILLIAMS Suite from the film, ‘Schindler’s List
PROKOFIEV Alexander Nevsky, Cantata, Op. 78
Jahja Ling, conductor
Joshua Bell, violin
Maria Riadtchikova, mezzo-soprano
Chorus, musicians pay quiet, serene tribute to Robert Shaw
Extracting music from movies can be tricky business. Taken out of context, a cinematic score can sound lonely, unmotivated, even useless, especially if the composer normally thinks in visual terms.
The Cleveland Orchestra avoided turning this week's subscription program into a pops concert by embracing music that is associated with movies yet healthy enough in substance to stand on its own. Resident conductor Jahja Ling and the orchestra approached each work with the same serious commitment they reserve for standard symphonic fare.
Not everything on the program began life in the land of film. After intermission, Ling led the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in the fourth movement from Brahms' "A German Requiem" in memory of Robert Shaw, the orchestra's former associate conductor and director of choruses, who died Jan. 25 at the age of 82.
"How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place" the choristers sang, bringing a serene glow to the rapturous lines and honoring the legacy Shaw afforded Cleveland and the musical world in general. The only possible response could be silence, which Ling, performers and audience sustained for what seemed a loving eternity.
Ling opened the program with another piece without roots in film, Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. Although Oliver Stone used this music in "Platoon," it originally was the slow movement from the composer's string quartet and later expanded (by adding a bass line) for orchestral use.
Ling emphasized the score's sense of yearning and repose, holding dynamics to a hush until phrases needed to take wing, and instilling every moment with poetic intensity. The big silence that halts the motion was startling; the poignancy, therefore, seemed all the more intensely felt.
Along with Barber, two other American composers whose music has helped add atmosphere and drama to the big screen were represented, John Corigliano and John Williams, with Joshua Bell serving in each work as vibrant violin soloist.
The Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra that Corigliano drew from his score to the upcoming film "The Red Violin" is a virtuoso vehicle in which numerous styles are touched upon and an aura of fantasy is pervasive. Corigliano revels in this hybrid type of writing, and "The Red Violin" contains many moments of vivid and adventurous interplay between soloist and orchestra.
In the three pieces from Williams' score to "Schindler's List," we hear a composer assimilating Jewish music in gestures that claim harrowing and hopeful beauty. The sensitivity Bell poured into the Corigliano was abundantly evident here. Ling, who was so alert to the intricacies in the Corigliano, was a deft partner in the Williams.
The program's cinematic spectacle is Prokofiev's cantata "Alexander Nevsky," whose music provides much of the dramatic punch in the eponymous Sergei Eisenstein film.
Prokofiev the poet and patriot are apparent in the sweeping pages of the cantata, which can sound jingoistic and bloated if not treated with care. Ling never allowed the nationalistic elements to get out of hand. Everything was controlled, judiciously paced and balanced between orchestra and chorus, but also clamorous when the music demanded to scream.
The chorus intoned the soulful passages with utmost warmth and attention to the Russian text. In the massive moments, the singing remained firm, open and blended. Mezzo-soprano Maria Riadtchikova in her U.S. debut, sang the in "The Field of the Dead" with probing expressiveness and true Slavic tonal resources. The score’s power and compassion were nobly set forth.
Subscription Week 15
STRAVINSKY Scènes de Ballet
TAKEMITSU riverrun
TAKEMITSU Asterism (1967)
SCRIABIN The Poem of Ecstasy, Op. 54
Oliver Knussen, conductor
Peter Serkin, piano
Uncommon imagination resounds in Takemitsu
The Cleveland Orchestra has amassed a formidable list of performances with major composers who also conducted or appeared as soloists. Among the figures are such titans as Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Respighi, Bartok, Prokofiev and Copland.
For the last two subscription weeks in February, the orchestra is playing under composer-conductors who are leading an intriguing array of works. Last night at Severance Hall, British composer Oliver Knussen returned to the podium to preside over music by Stravinsky, Toru Takemitsu and Scriabin. Next week, John Adams will do the honors with a varied lineup.
Hearing a composer interpret the music of other composers, or their own scores, often provides an insight. into how creative minds function. For this week's engagement, Knussen is focusing on composers who made widely different use of materials and instrumental devices. Two of them, Stravinsky and Takemitsu, underwent striking stylistic changes during their productive careers.
Takemitsu (1930-1996) supplied the bulk of the interest last night, in part because the two works in question, "riverrun" and "Asterism," had never been played by the Cleveland Orchestra. These pieces, scored for piano and orchestra, reveal a composer of uncommon imagination in terms of literary association and descriptive powers.
Taking its title from the first word in James Joyce's novel "Finnegans Wake," "riverrun" (1984) is an evocative tone poem in which the music moves with liquid agility from subtle to expansive washes of sound. Takemitsu's admiration for French composers is everywhere apparent, from his use of vivid harmonic language to coloristic details that range from silken to brilliant.
Kaleidoscopic sonorities and exotic dissonances give way to delicate lyricism, with the piano serving as dominant factor throughout.
"Asterism" (1967) finds Takemitsu in a much spikier frame of mind. The allusion to stars is portrayed in episodes that shoot between instrumental sections, piano, celesta and two harps. Takemitsu's mastery of the orchestra comes to the fore in passages in which each player repeats a pattern at liberty and the entire ensemble makes an enormous crescendo to a symphonic scream.
The soloist in both Takemitsu works was Peter Serkin, whose catholic taste has been on remarkable display here in a vast repertoire. He brought to the Japanese composer's music an elegance and poetic sensibility that revealed the inner spirit and mystical essence in each piece. Serkin was always expressive, thoughtful and attuned to nuances rather than percussiveness. Knussen led the Takemitsu scores with commitment and a clear sense of shape and detail.
Elsewhere, Knussen was less a motivator than a presenter. Stravinsky's "Scenes de ballet," which opened the program, is a bit of giddiness the composer wrote for a 1944 Billy Rose show, "The Seven Lively Arts."
The piece has hints of Stravinsky's neo-classicism, with nods to "Pulcinella" and other scores, but the geniality doesn't go far. Knussen's account lacked an incisive rhythmic profile and smooth tempo changes. The playing was often tentative, as if the orchestra hadn't quite found its bearings. Scriabin's "The Poem of Ecstasy," placed after the crystalline Takemitsu works, emerged as a post-Wagnerian extravaganza on vacation. Nothing about the performance suggested poetry or ecstasy, so what was the point? A work of such heightened passions needs a conductor who will take it to the brink.
Knussen stood there and gave signals. It sounded dutiful and dull.
Subscription Week 16
IVES Country Band March
ADAMS Gnarly Buttons
ADAMS Slonimsky’s Earbox
DEBUSSY Le Livre de Baudelaire
FALLA Dances from the Three-Cornered Hat
John Adams, conductor
Franklin Cohen, clarinet
Christine Brewer, soprano
Adams simply irresistible, and fun, conducting Adams
Any conductor who comes onstage brandishing a copy of Nicolas Slonimsky's "Lexicon of Musical Invective," a collection of some of the most myopic reviews in the annals of music criticism, either (a) has a terrific sense of humor, or (b) is asking for it. American composer John Adams fell into the first category last night at Severance Hall, where he conducted the Cleveland Orchestra in a program of music by Ives, Debussy, Falla and a composer named Adams. Slonimsky, the multigifted musician who lived from 1894 to 1995, was present in myriad guises. Aside from the wickedly funny book in the conductor's hands, the late genius was honored in the form of Adams' "Slonimsky's Earbox," a bright and engaging score whose materials emanate from Slonimsky's "Thesaurus of Scales."
Like many Adams scores, this piece is made of irresistible rhythmic activity owing some debt to the style known as Minimalism, but much richer and varied in devices and orchestral color. The spirit of Slonimsky is very much there in the witty displacements of phrase and instrumentation, all encapsulated by Adams in a romp for large orchestra.
The entire first half of the program, which was presented to a tiny audience last night, is given over to whimsical and resourceful pieces in their first Cleveland Orchestra performances.
Adams begins with Charles Ives' "Country Band March," another example of the American composer placing tongue firmly in cheek and loading tons of famous tunes on top of one another.
The band sounded like its lemonade had been spiked, and the resultant layering of melodies and madcap adventures emerged with typically Ivesian zest.
Along with "Slonimsky's Earbox," Adams is also represented by "Gnarly Buttons," a three-movement bit of cheeky and tender enchantment for clarinet and small ensemble, including banjo, accordion and electronic keyboard. The clarinet assumes the bulk of the perky material, traveling in all sorts of unexpected directions and playing perpetual-motion licks that reflect the twisted character of the title.
The second movement is a blissful hoedown, but not in the Western sense. Here, the scenario has something to do with a mad cow, a reference to the disease that swept through the herds of Great Britain several years ago. Nothing about the music sounds especially lactose tolerant.
Instead, the clarinet chatters jazzily away while the ensemble answers in delectably swinging fashion. The performance last night lacked something that is present on Adams' recording of the work with the London Sinfonietta: a lusty moo midway through the activity.
Even so, the piece remains a saucy and sensitive score, with a third movement that blends tenderness with mischievousness, as Adams is wont to do. The soloist was Franklin Cohen, the orchestra's principal clarinet, who brought the buoyant phrases to stellar life, soared in the lyrical lines and managed every tricky Adams rhythm with seamless ease.
Adams was an eager-beaver, alert conductor in all of these works, and he also proved helpful. in his scintillating orchestration of Debussy's "'Le Livre de Baudelaire." The four songs find Debussy in dreamiest frame of mind, full of ardor and impressionistic subtlety. Christine Brewer sang each work with superb sense of shape and meaning. Her soprano was as silvery as her dress; and she floated the highest phrases as if transported on wings. From Debussy, Adams moved to four dances from Falla's "The Three-Cornered Hat," in which he had less success.
The performance was short of lilt, breadth and nuance, sounding ill-rehearsed and rigid, but not a candidate for mention in Slonimsky's lexicon.
Subscription Week 17
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60, 'Leningrad'
Mark Wigglesworth, conductor
Stephen Hough, piano
Dark chords, solid debut propel musical sendoff
Leaving home can be a wrenching experience, even for an orchestra and its audience. The Cleveland Orchestra is taking leave of Severance Hall after this weekend while its beloved residence undergoes the final phase of renovation and expansion. Until returning to Severance in January, the ensemble will be ensconced at the Allen Theatre in Playhouse Square.
The orchestra's final Severance program before the next millennium seems almost symbolic in reflecting the tragedy and despair musicians and listeners must be feeling these days. There are only two works, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7, both among the darkest works in each composer's canon.
But with despair there is hope. Last night's performance marked the Cleveland Orchestra debut of British conductor Mark Wigglesworth, who was so firmly entrenched in Shostakovich's conflicted world that the Seventh Symphony fairly screamed in triumph by the time it ended in a blaze of C major. The work may appear to have been an odd choice to bid farewell, but it was a brilliant forum for a great orchestra to reveal all of its legendary qualities.
Shostakovich composed the Seventh Symphony, subtitled "Leningrad," under the most trying of circumstances. The great city was already crumbling under the weight of oppressive Soviet rule when the Nazis completed their invasion. In portraying the aura of war and peace, Shostakovich created a vast first movement that travels from proud statements and nostalgic phrases to an "invasion" theme as insistent as it is chilling.
This movement alone comes close to encompassing what Mahler meant when he said a symphony must contain the world. Yet Shostakovich isn't finished when the martial theme peters out. He offers three more movements in which many feelings are vented. There is typically sardonic writing in the second movement, as caustic as anything Shostakovich penned. The slow movement contains fervent yearning but also that special defiance prevalent in so much of the composer's music. And although the symphony edges closer to victory near the end, it isn't until more anguish is explored amid fierce orchestral narrative.
Wigglesworth, music director of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, unfolded the first movement with resolve and vigor without allowing the subtleties to go by the wayside. The music can sound bloated in the wrong hands, but this conductor made sure that everything was placed in context, textures were balanced and Shostakovich's emotional needs were patiently set forth.
The remaining movements also benefited from forceful shaping. Wigglesworth sustained the intensity whether stepping back to allow the music to whisper with ghostly beauty or yell at the top its lungs. Some matters of coordination weren't quite managed last night, but they were blips in performance that seized the ears and heart. The orchestra, with expanded brass, sounded disciplined, sonorous, controlled and glorious. The hall opened its acoustical arms and gave the ensemble a big hug, as if to say, "Don't worry. We'll all make through this together."
Getting through the Mozart concerto was a bit more of a challenge. The soloist, Stephen Hough, was his compelling self, perhaps too much so in emphasizing the work's tragic elements. The second movement went best, its lyric simplicity lovingly gauged. Elsewhere, the expressive aspects were bogged down by overly smooth articulation and a general lumpiness of approach. Hough's cadenza in the first movement went off the deep end probing harmonic worlds even Schoenberg might have found quizzical. Wigglesworth couldn't do much to invigorate the performance, until Hough added much-needed muscle in the finale.
But don't miss the Shostakovich, which provides Severance and the orchestra with a thrilling sendoff.
Subscription Week 18
MAXWELL DAVIES An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise (1985)
BRUCH Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra, Op. 46
MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, 'Scottish'
Jahja Ling, conductor
William Preucil, violin
Rollicking tunes definitely Scottish
Maybe we, should consider the Allen Theatre the Brigadoon of concert halls. Like the little Scottish village that awakens once a century, the renovated Allen appeared just in time to open its arms to the Cleveland Orchestra while Severance Hall, the ensemble's home in University Circle, is closed for expansion and restoration.
The orchestra's first subscription concert at the Allen last night proved a stirring Highland fling, even in an acoustical environment that is far more unforgiving and blunter than Severance. Resident conductor Jahja Ling was on the podium to lead Scottishinspired works by a British composer who lives in Scotland, Peter Maxwell Davies, and two German composers who loved the country, Max Bruch and Felix Mendelssohn.
There is no doubt about the national aspects in Maxwell Davies' "An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise." Along with its clever depiction of festivities surrounding a nuptial ceremony, a bagpiper shows up at the end to send those wonderful blasts through the place.
The road to this point is fraught with adventures and misadventures, including so much merrymaking that the orchestra becomes tipsy, an effect achieved by the composer with more re than a bit of glee.
The piece is filled with rollicking tunes that paint the various scenes in heather-laden color, and once the bagpiper arrives we know that the marriage will be happy. Ling relished the various overlappings of lines and the rhythmic inebriation, and the orchestra gave the witty writing ample room to sing and dance.
In her first concert as associate concertmaster, Ellen de Pasquale did a dashing job in the violin solos. The bagpiper was Bentley Wall, who made an entrance through the main floor and wound up onstage in front of the musicians. His debut with the orchestra couldn't have been more sonorous.
Bruch's "Scottish Fantasy" is perhaps even more rooted in the soil of Scotland, what with numerous folk songs woven into the fabric and embroidered by violin soloist and orchestra. The score calls for a fiddler who can savor the lyricism and negotiate technical hurdles without fear.
William Preucil, the orchestra's concertmaster, filled the bill in every way. He invested the poetic phrases with disarming sweetness and subtle nuances. The noble melodies Bruch laces through the work sounded freshly minted, keenly felt and just nostalgic enough not to cause an overdose of sentimentality. But Preucil wasn't merely keyed to Bruch's gentle qualities. He has the fingers and bow ability to handle all of the challenges in the last movement, which is virtuosic with a capital V.
The Allen Theatre’s dryness didn’t do a great deal to enhance Preucil's sound, yet the sensitivity he invested in every moment came bounding across the footlights. Ling was an ideal collaborator, keeping balances in check (and balances are strange in this theater) a and the ensemble in responsive form.
The fact that the Cleveland Orchestra sounds less like the Cleveland Orchestra in the Allen than at Severance doesn’t mean the performances downtown necessarily will be reduced in impact.
Ling ended the evening with a beautifully paced and shaped account of Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3, which is subtitled "Scottish." The turbulence that pervades the first movement received urgent definition, while the subsequent scampering figures flew on the quickest and lightest of wings.
Ling's expressive generosity allowed the Adagio to reveal all of its heart.
The tour of Scotland concluded in majestic country, with c conductor and orchestra as collective and eloquent tour guide.
Subscription Week 19
MAGNUS LINDBERG Cantigas for orchestra
MAHLER Das Lied von der Erde
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
Dagmar Pecková, mezzo-soprano
Gary Lakes, tenor
Pushing the boundaries with Magnus Lindberg and Mahler
The two works on the Cleveland Orchestra's program this week couldn't be more polarized in style. or expressive concept, but they have one thing in common: an abiding love for the possibilities of the symphony orchestra. Magnus Lindberg's "Cantigas" and Gustav Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde" make an intriguing pairing as conducted by music director Christoph von Dohnanyi and often played with enormous vibrancy and eloquence by his magisterial musicians.
Lindberg's score received its world premiere last night under Dohnanyi's baton at the Allen Theatre. The Finnish composer has risen quickly in the international music world for pieces that explore the boundaries of rhythm, harmony and instrumental timbre.
In "Cantigas," Lindberg employs the interval of the perfect fifth to set his materials in motion, and mostly on a propulsive and densely textured course.
At times, the effect is somewhat like that of a whirlwind gone amok. Instrumental sections converge and part with astonishing speed, traversing millions of notes that result in a spectrum of shadings and roaring sonorities. Not everything is set at a high decibel level. The opening lyrical oboe solo returns midway in even more embroidered fashion. The repose is generally brief, as Lindberg surveys another series of ferocious textures and harmonic worlds.
The most startling moment comes near the end, when a big shining. harmonic modulation appears on the horizon, almost as if to signal the culmination of Lindberg's musical ideas. As loud as "Cantigas" is for much of its 18 minute duration, it concludes in a quiet sonic landscape. The problems of much contemporary music are embodied in the score, which is often too busy for the ear to make sense of the complexity. But Lindberg is often so adept at transforming textures and colors that the narrative sustains interest.
Dohnanyi was in full command of the score, achieving striking definition of rhythms and layers of sound. The orchestra gave virtuosic voice to Lindberg's brainstorm, which is some achievement. An electronic whistle somewhere in the hall intruded upon the music-making, but not enough to distract from the music's forceful personality. Some shifting of the ceiling and walls of the stage shell has promoted a marginal improvement in wind presence.
Mahler's "The Song of the Earth" should be overwhelming in emotional impact. Here is the composer beginning to say farewell to life in six songs of ineffable beauty. The structure is symphonic, but the aura is so varied in poetic device that it transcends. everything Mahler has written to this point.
The performance last night had many magical moments amid a general sense of unfamiliarity. The work has been out of the orchestra's repertoire for 16 years, so it evidently will take time for the ensemble to crawl inside Mahler's psyche. Dohnanyi brought fine detailing to each song, if without the spaciousness often required. Some tempos were unsettled, but when conductor and orchestra saw eye to eye on the Mahlerian hopes, dreams and sighs of resignation, there were abundant rewards.
The soloists, however, were so variable as to shift the emphasis away from the vocal lines. Gary Lakes, replacing Gösta Winbergh, was swallowed when the orchestra opened up, and his tenor had an unhappy time in the highest phrases. Czech mezzo-soprano Dagmar Peckova, in her U.S.debut, gave sensitive shaping to her songs, coming into especially warm focus in the final movement, "Der Abschied." Even so, her voice tended to be too rich vibrato and prone to get caught on certain pitches before moving upward. At the moment, Mahler's "Song" isn't quite songful enough.
Subscription Week 20
BRAHMS Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90
BARTOK Duke Bluebeard's Castle (concert performance)
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
Cornelia Kallisch, soprano
Robert Hale, baritone
Evoking magnificent suspense in a dark 'Bluebeard's Castle'
Christoph von Dohnanyi has embraced the Cleveland Orchestra's greatness in two basic ways during his tenure as music director. He has concentrated on the music for which the ensemble was created, the symphonic repertoire, while also making use of its special qualities in the operatic literature through concert performances.
Both sides of this cherishable artistic coin are on majestic display in the orchestra's subscription program this week at the Allen Theatre. Dohnanyi has paired Brahms' Symphony No. 3 with Bartok's one-act opera, "Bluebeard's Castle." These are works of enormously dissimilar character and intention, but whose juxtaposition makes for one of the most compelling musical experiences of the season.
The Bartok opera has been out of the ensemble's repertoire for 27 years, too long a time to be away from the magnificent suspense the composer evokes with only two characters and a massive orchestra. It is a claustrophobic piece and psychological game, pitting Bluebeard and his fourth wife, Judith, in a battle of wills. She wants to look behind the seven doors in his gloomy castle. He wishes to keep his darkest secrets hidden away. Judith persists. Bluebeard gives in. Curiosity kills the wife.
Bartok's score is a marvel of descriptive writing, enhanced by his studies of Hungarian folk music and richly colored by his stunning command of instrumental resources. Each door has a different tonal world, the grandest being the fifth, which depicts Bluebeard's kingdom cast in the some of the most glowing sonorities of the 20th century (and this work was composed in 1911).
The action is largely static, placing the burden on the singers, conductor and orchestra (and, in the theater, director and designers). Last night's performance confirmed Dohnanyi's command in the repertoire. He employed his orchestra like e an alchemist mixing magical potions.
Bartok's hushed textures fairly whispered, as if they were ominous rumors. When the fifth door opened, the splendor had an overwhelming effect on the ears. Everything was paced to emphasize the dramatic details and motivations in the score. The orchestra played with a sense of cohesive theatricality few opera ensembles could approach. For listeners whose high-school Hungarian is rusty, English titles are projected above the stage.
Despite the opera's title, it is the character of Judith who should make the biggest impression, and German mezzo Cornelia Kallisch more than managed to convey the woman's need to know as much about her husband's galaxy as possible. Kallisch, in her debut with the orchestra, thrust her firm voice into Judith's phrases, finding the expressive core and drawing poignant nuances from the music. She is a gripping artist.
Baritone Robert Hale, who sang Wotan in the orchestra's first two chapters of Wagner's "Ring" cycle, didn't quite roll out the low notes as Bluebeard must, but he captured the character's stern, menacing demeanor with requisite dignity.
Subscription Week 21
MAHLER Symphony No. 9 in D major
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
Orchestra’s musical journey is complete with Mahler
If any work embodies the long journey Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Cleveland Orchestra have taken together during the last decade of the 20th century, it is Mahler's Symphony No. 9. The conductor and his ensemble began collaborating on the Ninth in 1990, when many matters were unsettled. Two years ago, they again explored the vast emotional terrain and came closer to fulfilling the agony and ecstacy that overflows from the score's pages.
The culmination of the journey is here. Last night at the Allen Theatre, Dohnanyi and the orchestra gave a performance of the 'Mahler Ninth that will be remembered as one of the summits of the music director's tenure in Cleveland. There are two more performances, at 8:15 tonight and tomorrow. Miss this Mahler at your peril.
Here is one of those experiences in which the artists almost disappear and we are left with nothing but the music in its purest form. What emerges is Mahler at the apex of his powers, revealing everything a about himself as a composer and as a human being. Every one of his symphonies is a piece in his autobiographical puzzle, making the Ninth a path - along with "Das Lied von der Erde" - toward death.
It is for this reason that the Ninth must stand alone on a program, as it did last night, allowing the four movements to proceed in one long arch. In fact, all the ills of the world seemed to be set aside when Dohnanyi and his musicians immersed themselves in the score. There were virtually no moments when the threads of Mahler's thoughts weren't woven into the richest expressive fabric. Dohnanyi has been accused of standing aside from music at times and appearing cool to a score's tensions and heart. But nothing remotely along these lines touched his Mahler on this occasion.
The growth since 1990 can best be described in terms of pacing, detail and emphasis. Dohnanyi now unfolds the opening movement with a masterful flexibility of hand. No Mahler Ninth can hope to succeed if the tenderness and passion in this movement aren't caressed, bent, propelled and held in poetic control. Where the conductor once moved across certain nuances with minimal inflection, he now gives ample space for lines to open up, without veering into the land of sentimentality. The climaxes are all the more cataclysmic for arriving in context, and often with surprising sonic power. To hear Dohnanyi meld his keen command of structure and subtlety with a heightened sense of ardor is to hear Mahler revitalized in ways that few conductors today could approach.
The two middle movements stand so apart in personality from the outer movements that they sometimes receive cursory treatment. This is not Dohnanyi's way. The second movement's Laender has charm, but also irony. The third movement explodes with such vehemence, especially in the closing pages, that its sarcasm fairly hits you in the face.
Then comes the final Adagio, as warm, poignant and. heartstopping a movement as Mahler ever conceived. Dohnanyi and the orchestra open their arms to the broad phrases, rolling carpets of lucid sound over the penetrating thoughts, and balancing majesty with some of the most awesome quiet utterances any orchestra is likely to produce.
Throughout 90 minutes that went by in a flash, the orchestra's corporate and solo playing loomed on a transcendent level of sophistication and energy. A note didn't speak and a passage that didn't quite fit in cropped up here and there last night. But for a Mahler Ninth of seamless cohesion and utmost profundity, Dohnanyi and his musicians were models of inspired artistry.
A performance: of this order poses If the orchestra can reach such a pinnacle, why search for a new music director at this point? Mahler, ever generous, has provided an answer.
Subscription Week 22
RAVEL Pavane pour une infante défunte
RAVEL Danse sacrée et Danse profane
DEBUSSY Le jet d’eau
DEBUSSY Trois Ballades de François Villon
RAVEL L'Enfant et les sortilèges
Pierre Boulez, conductor
Lisa Wellbaum, harp
Alison Hagley, soprano
Susanne Mentzer, mezzo soprano
Orchestra, led by Boulez, elicits enchantment of Ravel's music
French music takes a special touch that eludes many conductors, not to mention instrumentalists and singers. There is no reason to have any fear when Pierre Boulez is on the podium of the Cleveland Orchestra, as he was last night at the Allen Theatre for the first of two weeks of programs devoted to music by Debussy and Ravel.
Boulez, who has been associated with the ensemble for more than three decades, is such a master in this repertoire that a listener is assured his performances will claim the delicacy, coloristic finesse and expressive motivation needed to illuminate the scores at hand. For his two programs, the conductor is adding unusual distinction to our musical life by presenting both of Ravel's operas in concert versions.
Last night's opera was the composer's second work in the genre, "L'Enfant et les sortileges," the more delicate and poignant of the two (the other is the comic "L'Heure espagnole"). The English title, "The Child and the Enchantments," almost tells the story, which concerns a naughty youngster who refuses to do homework and is sequestered in his room. When the child's temper flares, the room comes to life, including furniture, animals and characters from fairy tale books.
The music that evokes these phenomena is among Ravel's loveliest and looniest, full of silken sonorities and vocal lines that ingeniously portray the various toys and surroundings in the child's life. Boulez treats the piece with remarkable lightness, and rightness, allowing textures to unfold pressure, but with ample rhythmic point to keep the dramatic elements in clearest perspective. To hear the Cleveland Orchestra play this score with such transparency and brilliance is to experience Ravel in all his individual beauty and inventiveness.
Boulez had a supremely gifted cast at his fingertips last night to carry Ravel's tale to the heights and enunciate Colette's French text with an elegant vengeance (the English translation was projected above the orchestra). Every inch the impish child, mezzo soprano Susanne Mentzer grimaced and fidgeted and poured forth gold whenever she opened her mouth. She was marvelous in conveying the child's moodiness, as well as the compassion that ultimately brings matters back to comforting earth.
The rest of the cast shares about 20 roles, and these singers were wonderful in characterizing the various insects, chairs, you name it. Alison Hagley was a silvery princess and Jane Giering De Haan a glittering coloratura (as fire and nightingale). As the cats, mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose and baritone Rodney Gilfrey were delicious in their meowing duet.
John Aler coped ebulliently with the high tenor parts, while Dominque Labelle was lustrous in three roles, Nathalie Stutzmann contributed a sonorous contralto as the mother and friends, and bass Peter Rose was imposing as the tree and armchair. The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus undertook a number of assignments, playing insects, shepherds and even numbers, and could be heard to splendid effect except when the orchestra was playing at its most generous volume.
It was an irresistible account of a little masterpiece.
Boulez also led magically idiomatic performances of works the orchestra will record for Deutsche Grammophon.
In Debussy's "Danse sacree et danse profane," principal harpist Lisa Wellbaum soared in the shimmering lines, drew glistening sounds from her instrument and demonstrated how a French waltz should swirl. Soprano Hagley was soloist in two Debussy works, "Le Jet d'eau" and Three Ballads of Francois Villon, in which she brought subtle nuances to the texts and caressed the rapturous phrases.
Boulez began with as serene, understated and lovely a reading of Ravel's "Pavane for a Dead Princess" as one could imagine. Even the Allen Theatre's dry acoustics were confounded by these musicians' refinement and flair.
Subscription Week 23
RAVEL Menuet Antique
RAVEL Le tombeau de Couperin
RAVEL Une barque sur l'océan
RAVEL Alborada del gracioso
RAVEL L’Heure espagnole, concert performance of complete opera
Pierre Boulez, conductor
Ruxandra Donose, soprano
John Aler, tenor
David Cangelosi, tenor
Rodney Gilfrey, baritone
Peter Rose, bass
Boulez brings color, humor and silken sonorities to Ravel
Until several days ago, the Cleveland Orchestra's program this week under Pierre Boulez seemed to have the makings more of a celebrity event than a concert. Then mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli canceled her appearance as the resourceful Concepcion in Ravel's one-act opera, "L'Heure espagnole."
But nothing about last night's performance of the opera at the Allen Theatre was disappointing. Romanian mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose was completely at home with Ravel, Boulez, the orchestra and her vocal colleagues. And the emphasis was returned to the composer, whose music these artists lavished with enormous subtlety, color and humor not exactly suitable for young audiences.
Boulez once again presided with the consummate control and the impeccable taste he always brings to French repertoire. His approach to Ravel is so attuned to silken sonorities, expressive refinement and transparent textures that the music appears to emerge with utmost inevitability, as if there may be no other way to treat these scores.
Like last week, the first half of the program is reserved for orchestral works Boulez and the ensemble are recording for Deutsche Grammophon. These will be treasured documents by a conductor who has an unerring sense of pacing and motion in Ravel, and by an orchestra that can make the music float as if on sonic clouds.
All of the orchestral pieces here began life as piano works, but as performed by Boulez and this orchestra, they suggest that they couldn't exist in any other form. To "Menuet antique," the conductor brings the most graceful nuances, keeping the dance moving with understated majesty.
"Le Tombeau de Couperin" becomes chamber music in the hands of these musicians, who take the menuet to the heavens and add a buoyant kick to the final Rigaudon.
The only two movements from "Miroirs" that Ravel orchestrated are opportunities to demonstrate the contrasting atmospheres and shadings the composer achieved to such brilliant effect. "Une barque sur l'ocean" is all radiance, reflecting the changing aura of water, while "Alborado del gracioso" portrays a morning song as sung by a whimsical fellow. The former piece Boulez touched with a serene hand, and the orchestra responded with playing of remarkable softness. "Alborado" was rendered delightful through coy gestures juxtaposed boldly by zesty outbursts.
The opera, in case you plan to bring the children, is quite naughty, but Ravel's music is so cleverly orchestrated and the double entrendres so sophisticated that no one is bound to be corrupted. Boulez is a deluxe conductor for such a score and the Cleveland Orchestra the perfect ensemble to elicit all of its beauty and whimsy.
He doesn't overplay the orchestral jokes, preferring to let Ravel be his insinuating, sonic self and defining the theatrical elements like a great director who trusts his material and his artists.
The narrative is extremely funny, concerning the escapades of a clockmaker's lusty wife who is on the lookout for an adequate lover. She finds her man, finally, in the form of a simple muleteer who can carry any clock, even if filled with other potential paramours. In the role of Concepcion, Donose was an alluring coquette, but also a woman who uses her brain to get what she wants. The mezzo sounded seductive and vibrant, and she brought a fine sense of temperament to her characterization. Her muleteer, Ramiro, is Rodney Gilfry, a baritone with keen comic timing and a voice that does his expressive bidding.
John Aler preened blissfully and warbled giddily as Gonzalve, the lover who can't utter anything that isn't in the form of a poem. As the larger-than-life, exceedingly boring Don Inigo Gomez, bass Peter Rose was an endearing oaf who became insulted when the contrabassoon could descend to depths he could hardly imagine. David Cangelosi gave a lesson in creating a comic character as the hapless husband and clockmaker, Torquemada. The opera is presented with digital English subtitles that bring Ravel's hilarious words into crisp perspective. For sheer pleasure, this program can hardly be topped.
Subscription Week 24
MARTINŮ Memorial to Lidice, H. 296
RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
BRAHMS Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90
Steven Smith, conductor
Joella Jones, piano
Pianist plays as if making poetry for listeners ear
Orchestral pianists are heard, but usually not seen. They sit toward the back of the ensemble near the percussion, sometimes next to the harps, and play a coloristic passage here and flourish there. When necessary, they jump over to celesta or another keyboard instrument such as an accordion.
Then there are the rare times when the bravest of these collaborative souls move forward to perform as soloists. Joela Jones, principal keyboardist of the Cleveland Orchestra, has spent ample time throughout her career in front of colleagues, exploring the world of concertos. She did so again Sunday at the Allen Theatre, where she performed Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the orchestra and assistant conductor Steven Smith.
The Rachmaninoff Second is among the beloved works in the repertoire, full of lyrical schmaltz and enough digital challenges to keep two hands deliriously busy. Some pianists go overboard in every direction, pulling phrases like taffy and treating the piano as if it were a punching bag. Not Jones, who is so alert to texture and shape that the music always emerges with poetry or power.
Her playing was clear, crisp and sensitive to line and dynamics. Rachmaninoff's heartfelt moments were managed with uncommon grace, especially the slow movement, where the songful utterances are best served when they receive the kind of subtle nuancing Jones provided. The quickest material holds no terror for this artist, even when the music goes roaring up and down the keyboard.
The tempo of the final movement may have been a bit tame for Allegro scherzando, and certain matters of synchronization suggested insufficient rehearsal. Even so, Jones honored Rachmaninoff's ardent personality, and Smith provided a partnership that cushioned the soloist or rang out vibrantly.
The program, which will be repeated at 8:15 tonight, began with Bohuslav Martinu's "Memorial to Lidice," a harrowing score dedicated to the Czech village whose entire population was wiped out by the Nazis in 1942. Martinu drew on numerous musical sources to weave his narrative of despair and hope, including the motto from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The eight-minute work is rich in emotional layers and beautifully written for orchestra. Smith led a dignified performance in which drama was balanced by poignancy.
On a more familiar note was Brahms' Symphony No. 3, a piece the orchestra played recently under music director Christoph von Dohnanyi at the Allen and New York's Carnegie Hall. Smith's account was by no means an imitation. He had his own ideas about the work, investing each movement with bountiful intensity and vivid shading.
Could the interpretation have expanded and contracted a bit more generously? Certainly. But Smith had a fine grasp of structural devices, and the expressive elements received affectionate molding. Brahms has been in this ensemble's blood for many decades, which the conductor was quick to acknowledge. The playing had that blend of classical transparency and romantic elegance that is so distinctive to the Cleveland Orchestra. In these musicians' hands, the composer's the thing.
Subscription Week 25
UNDERHILL Aspirant Variations for four flutes and chamber ensemble
DVOŘÁK Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104
SCHUMANN Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 97, 'Rhenish'
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
Joshua Smith, flute
Martha Aarons, flute
John Rautenberg, flute
Mary Kay Fink, flute
Heinrich Schiff, cello
A phalanx of flutists give premier performance with flourish and polish
The richness in the Cleveland Orchestra's program this week at the Allen Theatre lies partly in the diversity of forms and instrumental forces employed by the composers at hand. There is a chamber work featuring four flutes, a piece that can rightfully be called the king of cello concertos and a symphony of penetrating Central European character. The remainder of the richness lies in the stellar performances.
Music Director Christoph von Dohnanyi last night opened the eclectic mix with a world premiere, Nicholas Underhill's "Aspirant Variations," in which the orchestra's flute players served in solo capacities. The score has many innovative aspects, the first being the presence of four flutes in front of a chamber ensemble that collaborate to remarkably subtle effect.
Underhill doesn't make the mistake of casting the flutes in stereotypical roles. The principal interest is the expressive uses of the flutes, which are called upon to share materials, weave lines among one another and brief solo sojourns. The theme, which has a sinuous Middle Eastern feel, leads to 11 variations in which myriad textures and combinations are explored.
Much of the piece is contemplative in nature, allowing the soloists (some of whom also play piccolos and alto flute) to unfold long lines in tandem with the everchanging personality of the chamber ensemble. Harps, percussion, piano and strings (minus violins, who would argue in the high register with the flutes) provide delicate details and even assume the main function in spots.
It is a deftly written and immediately appealing piece. Underhill has a keen ear for transparent sonorities transformed with almost seamless ingenuity. The soloists were Joshua Smith, Martha Aarons, John Rautenberg and Mary Kay Fink, elegant and agile a phalanx of flutists as you're likely to encounter. They brought clarity, personality and wonderful sense of collegial cohesion to their duties. Dohnanyi was attentive to every minute flourish, and the chamber ensemble contributed shining nuances. Underhill came onstage at the end and hugged each flutist.
Another performance of enormous huggability followed. In Dvorak's Cello Concerto, Heinrich Schiff was a protagonist of heroic persuasion, eager to share the work's fervent statements with everyone within earshot. The Austrian cellist is a musician who blends boldness with heart-on-sleeve tenderness, just the blend Dvorak requires. He never overstates, yet when phrases call for vibrant attack, he is ready to invest them with overwhelming intensity.
Schiff filled out lines as if he were enacting the narratives.
The lyricism that pours from every corner of this score sounded energized by the way the cellist conveyed distinctive colors and expressive niceties. He has such command of the instrument that passages that often emerge as a series of accidental journeys were absolutely clear in shape and intent.
It was a performance that breathed naturally and opened up thrillingly. Dohnanyi was a forthright, idiomatic partner, and the orchestral playing had authentic Dvorakian poetry and vigor.
Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 (“Rhenish”) presented conductor and orchestra in the most traditional setting of the evening, though there was nothing remotely conventional about the performance.
Dohnanyi began with a broad first movement that stressed the songful qualities, rather than the propulsive aspects, and he followed with four movements that were exceptionally organic and involcing. Along with beauty of sound, the playing had energy, clarity and warmth in abundance. Schumann is rarely graced with such aristocratic grandeur or life.
Subscription Week 26
MENDELSSOHN A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Incidental music (excerpts)
SCHOENBERG Erwartung (concert performance)
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 82
Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor
Rosemary Hardy, soprano
Season finale is fitting farewell with a grand symphonic ending
The final program of the Cleveland Orchestra's 1998-99 season embraces and nightmares, and it ends grandly with a symphony that sums up the phrase “putting it together.” It is a stimulating farewell, one that befits a great ensemble and a music director whose ideas about programming never fail to overflow with intrigue.
The performances last night at the Allen Theatre didn't always sound completely lived-in, but Christoph von Dohnanyi about had such interesting ideas about each of the night’s scores that the momentary discrepancies seemed irrelevant. What mattered was that the music-making was energized by artists who were drawn together by the compositional and instrumental challenges, contrasts and colors.
For the first half, Dohnanyi juxtaposed two works that are set in the woods, but, oh, what different woods. Mendelssohn's Overture and Incidental Music to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" evoke the sylvan and magical landscapes of Shakespearean lore. Schoenberg's monodrama "Erwartung" is a journey through neurotic terrain marked by death and longing. Heaven standing next to hell, you might say.
The Mendelssohn was an opportunity for Dohnanyi to show how his orchestra can be remarkably nimble, light as a feather, abundantly regal and lyrical without being cloying. In most respects, the Overture was an example of prime Cleveland ensemble finesse, with strings tiptoeing swiftly and stunningly, and the rustics having a boisterous old time. The plot sagged toward the end, but recovery was soon in sight.
Dohnanyi didn't merely present the famous movements (yes, the Wedding March was there in all its blissful splendor). It took a detour to offer the farcical Funeral March, with tear-eyed clarinets and bassoons, and the Dance of the Clowns that is drawn from the Overture. A few crossed signals occurred along the way. Even so, the beauty of the playing and the elfin concept made for a pleasurable walk in the woods.
Schoenberg's monodrama avoids pleasure like the plague. The magnificence lies in the composer's command of dramatic moods and varied orchestral commentary. The Woman who is the opera's sole character has almost gone over the edge of despair as she looks for her lover in the dark forest and finally finds him dead. She attempts to come to terms with the circumstances, proceeding through myriad emotional states, until she cannot find a solution. The music Schoenberg supplied for this one-act piece is elusive in tonal language and perfectly suited to the narrative's psychological extremes. Dohnanyi brought the theatrical aspects into clear and forceful focus, revealing the inner orchestral workings and providing a gleaming frame which the Woman could vent her harangues. British soprano Rosemary Hardy had the notes accurately in place and voice. She was altogether too polite, sometimes almost whispering passages and often affording lines little dramatic sting.
Hers was a musical performance that had difficulty conveying the volatility suggested in the music. The season's finale is Sibelius' Symphony No. 5, which grows from small motives into one of the most thrilling symphonic edifices in the repertoire. Dohnanyi takes enormous risks in the first movement in terms of motion, not always achieving his goals, but at least creating the sense of tension required. Elsewhere, Sibelius' noble gestures unfold with exceptional subtlety or energy.
The last movement rises to the heights, especially with the orchestra responding so glowingly to its conductor's propulsive wishes. To savor those final six chords to the fullest, hold your breath. You won't be sorry.
Tuesday 27 August 2024
Cleveland Orchestra 1998 - 1999 season - Programme and Reviews
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