Ravel and Ligeti at Severance Hall

Tonight’s Cleveland Orchestra concert featured a pair of piano concertos performed by guest soloist Yuja Wang, with by guest conductor Petr Popelka.

The opening work was Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, commissioned by pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm due to injuries suffered during the First World War.  Based on his recordings, Wittgenstein (who’s younger brother Ludwig went to elementary school with Adolf Hitler) was not a top-tier pianist.  Yuja Wang is, of course, an extraordinarily gifted pianist, and her gifts were especially well suited to this concerto.  It wasn’t a question of mere technique, although her accuracy, layering of notes, clear articulation, and mastery of the pedal were apparent.  Wang also played with a sense of direction and narrative sweep which are too often missed in performances of this work. Popelka and the orchestra delivered an accompaniment which deemphasized the lusher aspects of the work in favor of a grittier approach.  For example, the opening contrabassoon solo  sounded more menacing than usual. 

The second work was the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by György Ligeti.  As brilliantly played as the work was by Wang and the orchestra, I could not find myself warming to the piece, which served only to aggravate my tinnitus. 

Wang generously performed two encores: A Latin-sounding rag piece which was unfamiliar to me, and the finale movement from Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata – which really brought the house down. 

Since many reviews and articles featuring Yuja Wang focus on her couture, I’ll mention that she wore a black dress during the Ravel, and quickly changed into a more colorful one for the Ligeti and encores. 

At intermission, we peeked outside and saw snowfall substantial enough to persuade us to make a premature exit, so we did not stay for the second half of the concert.  As it was, it took us far longer than usual to get home. 

 

Revueltas and Dvořák with Stasevska at Severance

The Cleveland Orchestra continued its contemporary practice of commingling the familiar with the unfamiliar in this weekend’s concerts with guest conductor Dalia Stasevska at Severance Hall.

Silvestre Revueltas’s La Noche de los Mayas was originally created as the score for the 1939 film of the same name, with which I am not familiar.  20 years later, José Yves Limantour arranged the music into a four-movement suite in a manner which structurally resembles a symphony.  The orchestration is highly eclectic; in addition to the usual instruments are the Indian drum, congas, bongos, güiro, metal rattle, and conch shell.  The work opens with a longing theme in A minor before moving into a Scherzo movement that features exhilarating cross rhythms.  From there a romantic andante, titled Night of Yucatán, leads directly into the finale - an extroverted theme and variations which includes shouts from the percussionists.  This is a highly interesting work that is new to me, and I’m looking forward to hearing it again on the orchestra’s Adella app.  The audience response was highly enthusiastic. 

Antonín Dvořák’s best known work is undoubtedly his Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 - titled “From the New World.”  The story of this work’s creation scarcely needs repeating: the composer, originally from what today is known as the Czech Republic, spent three years in the United States, during which he studied African-American and Native music.  The Symphony is one of several compositions from that era and has been a repertoire favorite for over a Century.  It can be argued that the Cleveland Orchestra is America’s premier Dvořák ensemble, having recorded his Symphonies from the time Erich Leinsdorf was music director onwards.  One can’t avoid mentioning George Szell, who recorded the complete Slavonic Dances, the Piano Concerto (with soloist Rudolf Firkusny), and the last three Symphonies – all of which are considered reference recordings.  Christoph von Dohnányi also made fine recordings of the Slavonic Dances and the four last Symphonies.  While the origins of several of the work’s themes have been analyzed over the decades, what is not often pointed out is that Dvořák’s last symphony is as well structured as any of its counterparts by Brahms, with a thematic cross referencing that enhances the work’s symphonic unity.  As a result of this, this symphony can withstand a variety of interpretive approaches: from the structurally strict Toscanini to the wayward Stokowski.  Franz Welser-Möst led this work in 2023, offering an interpretation that favored a classical, architectonic approach.  Stasevska’s way with this work was more rhapsodic.  True, she observed the first movement repeat, but the freedom of phrasing and plasticity of tempo, not to mention her attention to dynamics, heightened the opening movement’s sense of adventure.  The Largo movement was unusually broad and meditative, with a beautifully sustained cor anglais solo; and the finale was simply epic.  This was a performance to remember, and the audience held its breath as the final notes faded away.

With music director Franz Welser-Möst’s contract ending in less than two years, every appearance by a guest conductor at Severance takes on the nature of an audition.  This is particularly the case when those guest conductors are not currently under contract, as is the case with Stasevska.  Based on both the performance and the audience response at tonight’s concert, Stasevska is definitely a contender. 

My review of DG's new Maurizio Pollini box.

Deutsche Grammophon has issued an updated box of Maurizio Pollini's recordings with that label.  Click here to read my complete review.

Concerts at CIM and Severance with a composition in common

This week saw two different concerts which included one duplicate work, providing an opportunity for comparison and contrast.

The first was at the Cleveland Institute of Music, featuring the first performance of the newly founded CIM Virtuosi.  This is a conductorless string ensemble with CIM faculty member Todd Phillips as leader.

The concert opened with Mozart’s Divertimento for strings in D major, K.136 – a three-movement work completed when the composer was sixteen years old.  No doubt Mozart wrote it intending to be the lead violinist, as there are many rapid passages which could demonstrate his technique.  This was an example of true ensemble playing in which coordination and balance were nearly faultless.

The Divertimento was followed by the same composer’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K.488 with Antonio Pompa-Baldi as soloist.  This necessitated a stage change not just for the piano, but to bring several wind and brass players on stage.  Pompa-Baldi’s way with this oft-performed concerto was a model of interpretive rectitude.  He kept dynamics in check so that he did not drown out the small ensemble – yet he never made the music sound prettified or dainty.  Pompa-Baldi performed an encore, a traditional song from Naples, which was new to me.

As both Daniel and I had to get up early the next day, we didn’t stay for the concert’s post intermission work, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in C major, Op. 48.  Though I adore the piece, our eyelids were simply too heavy.

 

Saturday’s Cleveland Orchestra concert, led by music director Franz Welser-Möst, featured music of the 18^th, 19^th, and 21^st Centuries.

The concert opened with a 2020 work by American composer Tyler Taylor: Permissions.  Regular readers will know that I approach new music with an open mind, as I did with this piece.  But my open mind led me to conclude that this 10-minute work was an exercise in sonority and texture without benefit of a substantial idea.  The work has neither a theme nor a sense of dramatic through-line.  Taylor is the Orchestra’s new Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow.  Permissions was not a good omen for future collaborations.

Soloist Garrick Olhsson performed the same Mozart Concerto as we heard Thursday.  He and Welser-Möst presided over a performance marked by sensible tempos and a sense of interpretive unity.  The pianist brought a bit more emphasis to the left-hand than is often heard, and the second movement was tastefully embellished – as it would have been in Mozart’s own time.  An encore followed: a lovely rendition of Chopin’s Nocturne in D-flat major, Op. 27, No. 2.

 

The concert concluded with Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 97 – the so-called “Rhenish.”  The work is in five movements instead of the usual four and presents a bit of an interpretive challenge.  Much is said about Beethoven’s influence on Brahms, but part of the noble fourth movement reminded me of Brahms’ First Symphony – which was premiered 25 years after the “Rhenish.”  It’s worth noting that Schumann was an early advocate of Brahms.  Alas, Schumann was not the best orchestrator of his time.  I don’t know if Welser-Möst tinkered with the composer’s orchestration, but the performance featured a bit more clarity than is generally heard in this piece – which was most welcome.  Add to the clarity was a perfect sense of pacing, dynamics, and phrasing – in sum, a memorable performance of a work new to Welser-Möst’s repertoire. 

Late masterworks by Sibelius and Beethoven at Severance

Tonight’s Cleveland Orchestra concert had the highest attendance I’ve seen in many months, with an especially attentive audience on hand.

Tapiola, Op. 112, is one of Sibelius’s last works.  The tone poem derives its name from Tapio, the forest spirit, and the music gives the sense of Finnish nature and open spaces.  Music director Franz Welser-Möst and the orchestra brought to the work an unerring sense of pacing and balance, with an especially bracing storm episode – a section which must have been a major influence on film composer Herbert Stothart when he was writing the music to accompany the cyclone in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. 

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, was the last of the composer’s works to have a grand premiere – just three years before the composer’s death.  Nearly every great conductor and orchestra have performed this work, and this is the third performance I’ve heard led by Welser-Möst (including the Deutsche Grammophon recording, which unfortunately is hampered by middling sonics).  The opening movement was as propulsive as the 2018 performance I attended at Severance, but there was less of the sense of “desperation” that Beethoven indicated in the score.  Initially it was a bit plush until the middle section when everything began to gel.  The second movement, Vivace, included all the repeats and markedly clear timpani strikes.  The third movement, which alternates between Adagio and Andante, was a balance of majesty and poetry – while stripped of all pomposity.  It was in the finale where the night’s greatness lay: the celli and bass rejections of the thematic quotes from the earlier movements had a spielart, or speaking quality, seldom heard in this piece.  The famous theme was presented with a sense of inevitability until the “horrific fanfare” from the movement’s beginning was repeated and bass-baritone Dashon Burton sang his first solo.  The little march that follows Beethoven's exultant “vor Gott” was unusually quick and for a moment it seemed as if tenor Miles Mykkanen was struggling to match Welser-Möst's pace.  But they quickly realigned and from there, orchestra, chorus and soloists masterfully presented Beethoven’s oratorical vision, which included subtle nods to Gregorian chants, Handel’s Messiah, and Mozart’s Magic Flute leading to the composer’s world embracing coda.  The audience erupted in ecstatic cheers at the final note.  Truly this music, which has too often been misused to promote philosophies at odds with Beethoven’s own beliefs, was a much needed balm for these troubled times. 

Presentations of Beethoven’s Ninth are rightfully special events.  I’m glad Welser-Möst brought it back before his tenure with the orchestra comes to an end.

 

Trump’s gauche vandalism of the Peoples’ House

Donald Trump’s decision to demolish the East Wing of the White House, along with his, ahem, questionable decorating choices within the Oval Office, have left Americans with working eyesight and good taste astonished and appalled.  Trump’s shrinking cadre of defenders have replied by bringing up the Truman reconstruction, secret tunnels, and even President Obama’s rather benign partial conversion of the tennis court (far removed from the actual buildings) into a basketball court.  Much of what they share is, at best, incomplete.  Some of it is flat-out misinformation.

Let’s review the history of the White House.  The President’s House, as it was then called, was constructed between 1792-1800. The builders were a combination of enslaved African-Americans (who quarried the stone used for the construction) and employed whites.  The structure was built to the finest standards for American private residences at the time.  But it was deliberately designed to be modest compared to the residences that heads of state occupied in nations like Britain and France. This modesty pertained not just to size, but to design. The décor was simply dignified rather than ostentatious – a reminder that the new nation was neither a monarchy nor particularly wealthy. 

By the time the building was inhabited, George Washington was already dead.  John Adams was the first President to inhabit the home, and only for the final year of his presidency. 

Even before the White House was constructed, several exterior structures were built, including outhouses for the construction crew and, eventually, the first family and others who spent time at the White House.  Under Thomas Jefferson, colonnades were built on the east and west ends of the mansion. 

British troops invaded the Capital in 1814 and burned the White House.  First Lady Dolly Madison, aware the troops were on the way, famously removed  many of the home’s possessions – including artwork and furniture.  Then she laid out a feast for the approaching troops giving the first family and staff time to escape.  The British enjoyed the feast, then set the mansion ablaze.  The building’s internal structure was essentially destroyed with only the four exterior walls left standing.  As with the original construction, cost was a factor when the house was rebuilt.  The original wooden beams and joints were visually inspected for fire damage and approved or rejected for reuse.  But the engineers of the time lacked both the knowledge and the technology to make an accurate determination as to which pieces were fit for reuse.  They were unaware that even without burning, the extreme heat caused by the fire could compromise the material’s integrity.

The British did it...

The first known photo of the White House from 1846

Over the next century, the building and grounds were renovated numerous times.  Several greenhouses were built at various locations.  In the mansion itself, holes were drilled into the wooden supports to create conduits for indoor plumbing, gas lines, and electric wiring.  These invasions caused further stress on the structure.  

The north portico of the White House during the Lincoln Administration.

Other structures were intended as permanent additions – and these were submitted for design review and were rightly paid for with public funds (the use of private funds would have raised accusations of robber barons trying to curry favor with the increasingly powerful Federal government). 

Theodore Roosevelt’s creation of the West Wing was the most significant addition to the complex up to that time – though it should be pointed out that this change didn’t affect the original building itself.  Neither did Roosevelt’s creation of the first part of the East Wing.

It was Calvin Coolidge’s project to add a third floor to the White House in 1927 which sealed the building’s fate.  For the next two decades, groans and cracking sounds could be heard from within the walls, leading the gullible to believe that the building was inhabited by ghosts.

The West Wing was destroyed by a fire in 1929 and hastily rebuilt.  In 1934, Franklin Roosevelt had the West Wing rebuilt to accommodate the growing administration.  He also collaborated with famed architect Eric Gugler, creating a new Oval Office which has been used by Presidents ever since.  Many of the details remained visible nine decades later: built-in bookcases; hidden doors as well as doors topped with robust pediments; the Presidential seal on the ceiling; the subtle, recessed lighting.  That is, until 2025, when Donald Trump began festooning the room with gaudy accoutrements.

FDR in the new Oval Office in 1934.

In 1942, Roosevelt – with Congressional approval – expanded the East Wing.  Part of this was to conceal wartime tunnels which connected the White House to a bunker underneath the treasury department.  It’s worth remembering that from the time the US entered World War II until the day FDR died, a gas mask was strapped to his wheelchair. 

As ambitious as their expansions were, both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt knew the main building was having troubles.  But they felt little could be done due to the constraints of the Great Depression and World War II. 

Shortly after taking office, Harry Truman noticed significant issues.  As recounted in Robert Klara’s superb “The Hidden White House,” whenever White House butler Alonzo Fields, who stood over six feet tall and was strongly built, walked in the Yellow Oval Room on the second floor, the floorboards would creak and the chandelier in the Blue Oval Room below would sway as its crystals made a tinkling sound.  The floor in another room was beginning to tilt. Truman’s bathtub was starting to sink into the floor.  When a leg of Margaret Truman’s piano crashed through the ceiling of the floor below, Truman knew action had to be taken.  A team of engineers was hired.  They looked behind the walls, under the floors, above the ceilings and delivered their verdict: the building was standing only from “force of habit” and was in danger of imminent collapse. The Truman family moved to Blair House across the street for the duration.

A broken beam under Margaret Truman's bedroom.

Reconstruction

Congress was notified about the situation, and although some Republicans tried to use the issue for partisan gain, most were supportive of Truman’s desire to save the building.  Congress proposed what was the least expensive solution: tear the building down and replace the whole thing.  Truman, who despite his plain-spoken and occasionally profane manner was well-read in history, would have none of that.  He insisted that, no matter the cost, the look of the original White House be preserved.  To do that, engineers found a way to shore up the four outer walls while removing everything within those walls.  Equipment for demolition, excavation, and reconstruction was disassembled, the parts brought in through doors and windows, then reconstructed once inside.  Furniture was removed and stored off-site, the original interior was dismantled with parts labeled and numbered, and what was left was demolished.  Two sub-basements were excavated (partly for support services, partly for security in case of nuclear attack), a new steel frame was built, and the rooms were rebuilt largely based on the original plans.  Through the entire three-year project, Coolidge’s third floor was held in place by steel supports.  The Truman Reconstruction was the first significant building restoration in the history of the United States.  It was far from perfect, mostly because Truman ran out of money before the project was complete.  A decade after Truman returned to the rebuilt White House in 1952, First Lady Jackie Kennedy remarked that much of the décor looked like something out of a Sheraton hotel.  It was she who brought timeless elegance to the building.

Other Presidents have made smaller changes to the White House – mostly a matter of décor.  Presidential families are free to decorate the residence (the top two floors of the building) as they see fit.  Under George W. Bush, Congress approved a major modernization of the White House, renovating electrical work and HVAC, and installing security measures – including a system to detect airborne biohazards – which was carried out during the Obama administration.  Obama also added a basketball hoop to the tennis court and painted the appropriate lines – which is recently causing consternation even though Obama paid for the changes himself and has been out of office for over eight years.  Gee, I wonder why people get worked up over such a minor change, not to mention the tan suit Obama once wore…

This past week, Donald Trump had the entire East Wing torn down to create a vast, vulgar, gilded ballroom.  The welcome center, colonnade, the famed movie theatre, and First Lady’s offices are all gone.  Neither Congress nor the National Park System were consulted – technically a violation of law since the White House complex is part of the park system and federal property.  Who is paying for this: corporations wanting to curry favor with the Trump administration.  Teddy Roosevelt’s nightmare has come to life. 

What about those doing the actual demolition and construction?  Have they been properly vetted by the FBI and/or Secret Service?  Who knows what could be hidden within the walls of the upcoming grandiose monstrosity.

I can’t think of any past president, of any party, who would approve of what has happened to the White House over the last few weeks.  But Republicans nationwide are largely looking the other way.  I’m old enough to remember than despite their deep political disagreements during the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill would regularly get together to have drinks, swap stories, and share a few laughs.  During one such conversation, the Republican President and the Democratic Speaker commiserated on the loss of historical architecture and its replacement with “ugly” modern buildings.  That conversation led to the Rehabilitation Tax Credit, which has made possible the renovation and reuse of many older buildings.

Unlike Reagan, Donald Trump has no respect for historical architecture.  He famously destroyed several friezes from the 1929 Bonwit Teller building to build Trump Tower after he said he would preserve them and donate them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He destroyed Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden for a tacky concrete patio. Now he’s destroyed the East Wing after he said he wouldn’t. This level of contempt for simple beauty is unique in our nation’s history. 

Every previous change to the White House was to enhance or add to the existing sight, respecting the original while increasing functionality to account for modernization and the growth of both our nation and the Presidency.  There was nothing “wrong” with the East Wing to justify its demolition. 

I believe Trump’s more vociferous supporters will stand by anything he does.  He could bomb the White House and they would come up with an excuse to rationalize his every action.  Then there are those who simply lack the respect for our nation’s history and the simple good taste to comprehend that Trump’s gaudy, gilded, bloated addition is the definition of tacky.

Autumnal Prokofiev and Brahms at Severance

The weather in northeast Ohio segued from Summer to Fall this week, and it’s appropriate that The Cleveland Orchestra presented a program which was autumnal in both repertoire and performance.

 The concert began with Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131 – his last work in the genre.  By the time he began work on this Symphony, Prokofiev was a defeated man – denounced as a “formalist” by Soviet musical apparatchiks in 1948, suffering a stroke in 1949, largely withdrawn from public life.  The symphony is permeated by a reflective mood, perhaps nostalgic for an earlier, less repressive era.  Shortly before the work’s premiere, colleagues persuaded Prokofiev to add a cheerful and energetic coda.  But Prokofiev told a colleague that he preferred the original restrained ending.  Franz Welser-Möst and the orchestra honored the composer’s intentions this weekend not just with the ending, but the entire performance, which was suffused with a sense of farewell.  Each movement was perfectly paced and immaculately played – even though this work is hardly a repertoire staple.  The premiere of this work in 1952 marked Prokofiev’s final appearance in public.  In a bitter irony, he died on the same day as Joseph Stalin.

Following intermission, pianist Daniil Trifonov took to the stage to join Welser-Möst and the orchestra in Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83.  Unlike the Prokofiev Symphony, this work is a repertoire staple.  In fact, Welser-Möst led the orchestra in the piece with soloist Igor Levit back in 2022.  It says something about the conductor’s skill as an accompanist that he can lead two highly disparate interpretations of the same work.  Where Levit’s performance was briskly impulsive, Trifonov’s was ruminative.  Tempi in the first two movements were among the most flexible this listener has ever heard in this work.  There were moments during the scherzo’s trio where Trifonov nearly brought the proceedings to a halt.  The third movement, marked Andante, was more of an Adagio – yet in its way Trifonov’s approach worked.  He was helped by Principal cellist Mark Kosower’s solo which was luminously gorgeous.  Perhaps in contrast with the third movement, the last movement was unusually swift and whimsical.  Despite there being more empty seats than one would expect with a popular guest soloist performing a well-known concerto, the performance was received with a loud ovation.  Trifonov played the briefest of encores, Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitive, Op.22, No. 10 (marked Ridicolosamente).  A pointed contrast to the weighty Brahms Concerto.