Liszt, Dohnányi, and Bartók at Severance

The Summers at Severance series continued with guest conductor Christoph Koncz leading The Cleveland Orchestra in music of Hungarian composers Franz Liszt, Ernő Dohnányi, and Bela Bartók.

The concert began with one of Liszt’s better-known orchestral works, Les préludes (Symphonic Poem No. 3).  Truth be told, I’ve never been a huge fan of this piece, nor any of Liszt’s works for orchestra.  It’s always sounded like rather pompous film-music to me.  But Koncz made a convincing case for the work, with a crisp presentation of the material, devoid of mawkishness, sentimentality, or phony swagger. 

Ernő Dohnányi (sometimes referred to as Ernst von Dohnányi) was the father of Hans von Dohnányi, who was murdered by the Nazi regime for his resistance to Hitler, and the grandfather of Christoph von Dohnányi, who was conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra from 1984-2002.  The Symphonic Minutes, Op. 36, from 1933, is an entirely new work to me.  The five short movements - with their very interesting use of rhythm, piquant harmonies, and orchestration - were a delight to hear.

Following intermission, the concert concluded with a surefire hit: Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.  Koncz led the orchestra in a performance which was well structured and proportioned, with clear balances, humor in the Interrupted Intermezzo (to the extent that I had to keep myself from laughing out loud at the parody of the theme from Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony), and spectacular brass playing in the finale.

As a conductor, Christoph Koncz provides direction for the orchestra without needing to put on a balletic show for the audience.  One would like to hear him in more varied repertoire, but based on what I heard and saw last night, he should be on the short list as a possible successor to Franz Welser-Möst.

Despite the hall being only about half-full, the audience was attentive and highly enthusiastic.  

Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Ravel with Santtu-Matias Rouvali at Severance

The Cleveland Orchestra’s Summers at Severance series continued with guest conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali.  With the relatively young conductors guesting at Severance (Rouvali was born the year I graduated high school) one can’t help but wonder if these concerts are serving as quasi-auditions as the orchestra searches for a successor to music director Franz Welser-Möst, who steps down in two years.

Appropriately for a work composed as the 19^th Century dawned, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36 looks slightly backward – but mostly forward, and marks the transition between that composer’s early and middle periods.  The work is shorter in length than most of his later symphonies, but it boasts a larger orchestra and discards the traditional minuet in favor of a more energetic scherzo.  As with Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, his Second Symphony’s opening movement is longer and more complex than was common at the time.  As a relatively forward-looking work, Vienna’s conservative critics were ready to pounce, one referring to the merry, vigorous finale as "a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to die, but writhing in its last agonies and, in the fourth movement, bleeding to death."  There was plenty of vigor and merriment in Rouvali’s way with the piece – I use the term “way” instead of interpretation deliberately.  It was a technically polished, surfacy rendition.  The Larghetto was a pretty chain of melody but was missing the depth one would hope for this movement – the tension leading to the minor section was all but missing.  Meanwhile, Rouvali seemed to enjoy putting on a show with numerous extraneous gestures that seemed geared for the audience more than for the orchestra’s – or the music’s – benefit.  That said, the playing had all the polish one usually expects with The Cleveland Orchestra – but how much of that belongs to the players and how much to the leader?

There is something appropriate about choosing this particular Beethoven symphony for the program, as both the third and fourth movements have a dancing quality, and the post intermission works originated as ballet music.

Stravinsky’s ballet score, Jeu de cartes (Game of Cards), comes from 1936 and is a product of the composer’s neoclassical period.  Each of the three “hands” starts with a fanfare: the cards being dealt to the players – invisible players because in the case of the ballet the cards have a life of their own.  Most prominent is the Joker whose motifs are capricious.  Rouvali was more convincing here – it was obvious he knew the score inside and out.  He kept things balanced and moving in an appropriately balletic fashion.

The evening’s final work, Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from “Daphnis et Chloé” is a piece I’ve come to love again and again.  It’s gorgeously orchestrated: in addition to the usual strings, winds and brass, Ravel includes the triangle, tambourine, castanets, glockenspiel, two harps, and celesta.  It goes beyond ballet into the realm of an orchestral tone poem, and Rouvali exploited the orchestra’s huge dynamic range – from the hushed woodwind pianissimos of the beginning to the full orchestra crescendo that followed.  Here, Rouvali was fully in his element, leading playing that included gorgeous splashes of color, perfectly timed rubatos, and fortissimos that were plenty loud but never harsh.  It was a stunning performance that rightly brought the audience to its feet. 

But as convincing as Rouvali was in the Stravinsky and Ravel, his Beethoven was wanting.  As versatile as our orchestra is, they built their reputation on the core classical repertoire of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner – along with advocating for new music.  Based on the above and on what I heard last night, I don’t feel Rouvali is a match for Cleveland.

Wolfgang Mozart and Richard Strauss at Severance

The 2025 Summers at Severance series kicked off with guest conductor Marie Jacquot leading a program of Mozart and Richard Strauss.  It was a contrasting concert with both große kleine Kunst and kleine große Kunst.

The concert began with a brisk rendition of Mozart’s Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527.  It’s interesting to me that such a consequential opera has such a brief overture – yet it beautifully encapsulates the whole work.  The performance was immaculate and slightly small scaled, as would have befitted an opera house orchestra from Mozart’s time.

Violinist Randall Goosby then joined conductor and orchestra for Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 216.  Goosby brought flawless technique, a sweetly vocal tone, and a welcome avoidance of HiP mannerisms to his performance.  The second movement in particularly flowed beautifully – “like oil,” as Mozart frequently wrote in his letters to his father.  It was interesting to note that the work doesn’t end with a bang like so many of Mozart’s concertos, but rather disappears wittily.  Goosby’s and the orchestra’s performance were warmly received, and the soloist played a gorgeous encore: Louisiana Blues by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.

Both the Mozart works were relatively brief, an example of große kleine Kunst – i.e., great art in small form.  I’d never heard Richard Strauss’s Symphony in F minor previous to tonight – indeed, this is the first time the Cleveland Orchestra has presented the 1884 work.  Think of that: the work was premiered the year Harry S. Truman was born – and not heard locally until last night.  The Symphony, at 45 minutes long, is a textbook example of kleine große Kunst – a large work of art with relatively small merit.  I don’t mean to imply that the work is of zero merit, but it barely hints at the greatness that lay in Strauss’s future.  One hears influences by Schumann and Brahms in the work, without the conciseness of form that the latter brought to his symphonies.  There are themes aplenty, but they are not very well developed.  On the other hand, the symphony demonstrates Strauss’ mastery of orchestration.  Still, it’s an impressive piece for a barely 20-year-old composer which hints at far greater things to come.  But in the end, the symphonic whole amounted to less than the sum of its four movements.  Jacuot, a gifted conductor, made as persuasive a case for the work as anyone could.  Whatever the work’s shortcomings, I hope Cleveland audiences won’t have to wait until 2166 to hear it again.

The house was well filled with an attentive mix of familiar and unfamiliar faces, with applause between each of the movements of the concerto and the symphony.

Independence Day and the prison of Provincialism

As I’ve stated in previous posts, Independence Day means more to me than the founding of the United States.  It represents the adoption of a philosophy which ought to be reexamined from time to time.  While many Americans will be grilling hot dogs and burgers, waving flags, and setting off amateur fireworks this weekend, how many have actually read the full text of Declaration of Independence?  I have, and it makes for good reading – especially today, when so many of our rights are under attack. 

Take for example, this complaint aimed at the British Monarch, George III:  

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.” 

Is what George III did all that different from what has been happening across the country since 2017, where polling sites are being shuttered in minority areas and mail-in ballot options are being restricted – thus suppressing voter turnout in those areas?

Or this concern:

“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”

In other words, George III was placing restrictions on immigration.  Sound familiar?

There are other concerns voiced in the Declaration which presage today’s concerns, from restricting trade to quartering armed troops in cities.  I’m tempted to opine that the dude would have loved Trump and his minions.  George III, a weak monarch who was doing as his ministers advised, did these things because he was led to believe that they would intimidate the disobedient colonists from acting out further.  George and his ministers miscalculated. 

While few Americans will have read the passages above – much less understood how they relate to today’s political struggles, many will spout the most ridiculous nonsense without a trace of irony.  And many who disagree with them will remain silent for fear of causing offense.  Part of this is because the notion of objective truth has been under attack, and I feel it is not exaggeration to state that truth is in danger of dying altogether – killed by bias, driven by social media.

Today, social media locks people into their own biases and prejudices.  This is by design, because those who have monetized social media have learned that engagement is driven by calculated outrage and confirmation bias.  What is confirmation bias?  An example: someone uses a search engine to research a topic – for example, conspiracy theories about vaccines, the moon landing, or 9/11 – and finds an article or a YouTube video which agrees with their viewpoint.  In other words, they locate something that confirms their bias.  They click on the link, which becomes part of their history – which the algorithm perpetuates by sending similar links their way.  In essence, without even knowing it, users close their own minds. 

As demonstrated in Yuval Noah Harari’s erudite book Nexus : A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, the tendency toward confirmation bias in social media, where disinformation is equated with truth, can have catastrophic results.  Both Facebook and YouTube played a significant role in worsening the Rohingya Genocide.  It’s not as if those who programmed these social media tools deliberately set out to kill human beings, but the algorithm programed into them prioritized engagement over human wellbeing.  For “engagement” means money.

Despite waxing and waning content moderation, the trend continues to this day – as demonstrated by the increasing toxicity of most prominent social media platforms. Confirmation bias is taken to its furthest degree in Donald Trump’s ironically named app, Truth Social – which, despite its all-American chest thumping, was financed by Chinese and Russian interests.

This phenomenon is not unique to the United States.  It has been observed in the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Argentina as well – where manipulation of social media enabled unqualified political candidates who would not been elected dog catcher 20 years ago to obtain leadership positions. 

Confirmation bias dates back to long before social media.  It was most prevalent in what has been known as the ghetto.  Understand that when I use the term “ghetto,” I don’t mean in the modern American sense – which generally refers to a lower income African-American neighborhood – but in the classic sense, which refers to an insular, ethnically/religiously homogenous area.  For centuries, these places were necessary for simple survival.  That is no longer the case except in the most backward parts of the world.

For a brief period, I lived in a “gayborhood” in suburban Boston, Massachusetts.  As a young gay man establishing his identity, it had its advantages.  But eventually the conversations became repetitive and tiresome: which guy from the gym might be gay, who had the best body or attribute, and Madonna – lots of Madonna.  It all became a bit stultifying, like living in an echo chamber.  I had forgotten my annoyance with the paradigm until my husband Daniel and I spent some time in one such neighborhood a few years ago: Wilton Manors.  I found it depressing.  From what I’ve heard from others who lived in similarly homogenous places, my experience was far from unique.  Daniel and I now live in a very diverse suburb to the east of Cleveland now, and while I was happy to see three rainbow flags on my block this past month, I’m equally glad to live in a mixed community with people of all colors, creeds, orientations, and identities.  Variety is the spice of life.

Whether they are referred to as ghettos, shtetls, Ummahs, gayborhoods, or whatever, closed communities lead to closed minds. Social media has similarly placed users into “thought ghettos,” where Provincialism reigns.  Provincialism, sometimes also called “Parochialism,” is the enemy of freedom of thought – a liberty which is in danger.  It’s worth noting that in George Orwell’s 1984, people are prosecuted for “thought crimes.”  With many exploring their hidden desires and dispositions on apps and the frequent breaches of personal data, the notion of “thought police” is not as fanciful as it seemed in 1948.

I certainly understand having to navigate diverse viewpoints and complex conversations.  I am a registered Democrat who comes from what was once a solidly Republican family.  Both my parents and all of my grandparents were Republicans, and my great grandfather was a Republican member of the Michigan state legislature.  I am the only LGBTQ person in my immediate family.  My closest living gay biological relative is a second cousin who I haven’t seen in 35 years.  Recently I met up with my father’s sole remaining sibling, who is 89 years old.  During a wide ranging conversation, he related to me that he had been a Republican all his life but has never voted for Donald Trump.  He either voted Democrat those years or stayed at home.  While he still believes in the conservative philosophy as espoused by President Eisenhower, he laments the lack of bipartisanship.  I found my uncle’s perspective intriguing as it echoed something my father told me in March of 2016, just a few weeks before his death.  Additionally, my maternal grandmother began to align with the Democrats in her old age – she was appalled at the GOP’s cutting of social services and the hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich and other adulterous Republicans persecuting Bill Clinton over his sexual peccadillos.  While I have long supported the liberal economic philosophy as espoused by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman (who were so far to the left economically that their policies would be aligned with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez today), along with social policies that were not conceivable during the New Deal (like marriage equality), I also regret the lack of across the aisle communication.  But let’s not kid ourselves: It’s not Democrats who have steamrolled their agenda by firing senior ranked military personnel, firing Judge Advocates General, and crippling government agencies they don’t like.    

The America that used to exist, where leaders of diverse viewpoints talked to each other, made deals, even engaged in a little horse-trading, needs to reemerge.  Compromise may be a dirty word to some.  But it is what allowed us to beat fascism abroad, land a man on the moon (yes, that really happened), and win the Cold War.  The loss of the ability to compromise has led to the credible threat of fascism at home, crippled our scientific and space programs, and helped a resurgent, imperialist Russia gain a foothold in Eastern Europe.

In the end, it may be that the Revolutionary War was for naught – a 250-year experiment that ultimately failed. 

So, on this 4^th of July, let us declare our independence from the prisons of closed-mindedness and from provincialism in all its forms.

And read the Declaration of Independence.

Spanish Fantasy

 I draw inspiration for my compositions from people, places, and emotions.

  

Janáček’s opera Jenůfa, at Severance

Daniel and I made our way to Severance Hall to see the culmination of The Cleveland Orchestra’s season, a concert presentation of Leoš Janáček’s searing opera, Jenůfa.  The opera is the primary event of the 2025 Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival, which focuses on the theme of reconciliation.

The opera’s story is grim.  Jenůfa wants to marry a man named Števa. Jenůfa’s stepmother declares that Števa may only marry Jenůfa if he refrains from drinking for a year.  Števa  leaves town to serve in the military and returns to drunkenly boast of his conquests of numerous women.  Meanwhile, another man, Laca – who happens to be Števa’s half-brother – pursues Jenůfa and, when she rebuffs him and tolerates Števa’s shenanigans, Laca slashes her face with a knife.  Unbeknownst to everyone is that Jenůfa is pregnant with Števa’s child.  After the child is born, the stepmother worries that Jenůfa will never be able to endure the humiliation of being a scarred, unwed-mother in their provincial town, so she commits infanticide, hiding the baby’s body under some ice in the nearby mill-stream.  Eventually, Laca is able to gain Jenůfa’s hand in marriage.  But the wedding is interrupted when the baby’s body is found and the stepmother is arrested.  As the authorities haul her away, Jenůfa sings of her forgiveness of the stepmother, because she meant well.      

I have to say, anyone who murdered my child, even under the best of circumstances, would be unable to earn my forgiveness – regardless of the prison sentence.  But this is opera, not real life.  

On purely musical terms, Jenůfa was very well presented.  Franz Welser-Möst is a master at pacing opera presentations, and he kept the action moving while allowing the singers freedom of phrasing.  In particular, Latonia Moore as Jenůfa and Nina Stemme as the stepmother not only sang extraordinarily well, but presented their characters with a richness that were noteworthy for a non-staged presentation.  That’s right, Jenůfa was given what they call a concert presentation – no sets, no costumes.  Instead, the singers were placed on a raised platform, which I suspect was done for reasons of vocal projection. 

And here we come to my problem with this performance: There was no reason not to stage this opera, just as there was no reason to avoid staging Tristan und Isolde two years ago.  Let’s not kid ourselves.  The Cleveland Orchestra is not lacking for money.  They received a $50 million grant from the Mandel Foundation several years ago, and donations from individuals and corporations continue to pour in.  In his essay included in the Festival’s rather lavish booklet, Welser-Möst refers to the success of The Cunning Little Vixen in 2014; so extraordinarily well received that the orchestra decided to present it again three years later.  But one of the reasons Vixen was so popular was precisely because of the staging.  While an elaborate staging like those done for Vixen and Pelléas and Mélisande would have been ideal, even a modest staging would be preferable to having the cast stand around on an elevated platform and sing from the score.  While the performance was very well received by the audience, I must point out that I have never seen so many empty seats at an opera presentation at Severance.

 

As noted above, the theme of this year’s festival is reconciliation.  Other events include a presentation of African-American art, a performance of Latin music by Chucho Valdés and his Royal Quartet, pianist Michelle Cann performing music from Chicago’s Black Renaissance, a Symposium on immigration & reconciliation, and a screening of The Royal Tenenbaums.  In an age when the United States in particular is becoming more economically segregated, when people are being marginalized, it is heartening to see a festival from a Classical music entity whose audiences are still overwhelmingly white and older. 

True reconciliation can only exist if there is justice.  An historical example from American history is Reconstruction, which was botched by Andrew Johnson and his successors.  The primary instigators of the American Civil War, including Jefferson Davis and other secessionists, never had to pay for the consequences of their actions.  Thus Jim Crow, the segregation of everything from the use of public facilities to miscegenation laws, and denying African-Americans the right to vote were allowed to fester for a century.  Even six decades after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, disparities remain – particularly with regard to income. 

80 years later after the American Civil War, the United States had another decision to make: What to do with West Germany after Hitler’s defeat.  The destruction in Germany was worse than that in the American South by orders of magnitude.  Denazification was no easy task.  Hitler’s government had not only launched the worst European conflagration in human history, it ruthlessly butchered large swaths of its own population, including Jews, Roma, Homosexuals, political opponents, and those with disabilities.  The Holocaust was planned by the Nazi elite, but ordinary Germans helped carry it out – and many more looked away, refusing to see what was clearly visible.  After the war Nazi leadership was put on trial, with many being executed.  Other Germans, from the prominent to the ordinary, faced time in jail and suspension of their careers.  Numerous lower-level figures were allowed to get on with their lives.  But everyone was made to understand, if not accept, that Germany had lit the flame that set Europe on fire, how Nationalism and bigotry struck the match, and how ordinary Germans allowed it to happen.  Teaching about the Holocaust became part of the required school curriculum and the display of Nazi symbols remains illegal in the reunified Germany.  Denazification was not perfectly carried out – but at least it was a sincere effort to address some wrongs – something which was not even attempted after 1865.  In the United States today, Confederate flags fly even in states which did not secede from the Union or allow slavery.  As someone descended from members of the Union Army and Navy, including one who died at Gettysburg, I remain highly troubled by this.  I have concluded that one of the great tragedies of our American history is that "deconfederatization" never took place in the Old South.

    

No justice, no peace.

Know justice, know peace.

Mozart, Loggins-Hull, and Prokofiev at Severance

The 2024-2025 Cleveland Orchestra season is nearing its end.  Music Director Franz Welser-Möst led the orchestra in a typical program which balanced an established older work with a brand-new piece, and an unfamiliar older work.

The concert began with Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550.  Welser-Möst has led several Mozart symphonies over the past 23 years of his tenure here, but this is the first time I’ve heard him in K. 550, a work I know well.  Mozart is quietly revolutionary here: the piece opens not with the “sit up and pay attention” chord that was common with the time, but a quiet and very brief pulsing passage which leads directly to the main theme; in the finale, Mozart introduces a transitional passage which includes 11 of the 12-note chromatic scale, with the note of G (the home key of the work) left out – a technique which is prescient of Arnold Schoenberg.  Welser-Möst used a reduced complement of strings which made it easier for the winds to be heard.  The conductor’s tempi, phrasing, balance, and pacing were just right.  The only thing which detracted from my enjoyment was a small group of audience members who applauded after the first and second movements.  For years, I have considered Mozart’s last Symphony, No. 41 in C major, K. 551, as my favorite by that composer.  But Welser-Möst may have changed my mind and allegiance to K. 550. 

The next work was a new piece receiving its world premiere this weekend: Allison Loggins-Hull’s Grit. Grace. Glory.  This work is optimistic, broadly tonal, and filled with the spirit of, well, Cleveland.  The opening movement, titled Steel, pulsed with dynamic energy.  Shoreline Shadows, the second movement, stepped back a bit and had moments of reflection – I felt as if I was enjoying a tranquil day on the shores of Lake Erie.  The third movement, Quip, was self-deprecatingly playful in the way one often hears in a Haydn menuet or finale.  The finale, Ode, was suffused with the spirit of memories before segueing into a “Rock and Roll” section which concluded the piece.  It’s encouraging to hear music which leaves the audience enthused, as they were here, instead of baffled.

Allison Loggins-Hull acknowledges the ovation after the performance.

The last work on this weekend’s program was the revised version of Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4, which, interestingly, was included on another program two years ago that also included a premiere of a work by Loggins-Hull.  Welser-Möst’s interpretation of the work appears to have changed a bit: the outer movements were broader last night than in 2023.  The central movements just seemed, well, uninteresting.  My conclusion leaving the concert was the exact opposite as two years ago – aside from the opening movement it’s one of the weakest works of Prokofiev I’ve ever encountered.  This may simply be a reflection of my status last night, as I was tired and recovering an exhausting week that included a recent vaccination.  However, the fact that the work has not crossed my mind over the past two years refutes that supposition.

We’re still deciding whether to attend next week’s concert presentation of Janáček’s opera Jenůfa.