Cleveland welcomes Sheku Kanneh-Mason

The Cleveland Orchestra hosted the return of guest conductor Jakub Hrůša and the Cleveland debut of cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason this past weekend.  The repertoire featured ranged from the unfamiliar to the slightly familiar – something of a pattern this season.

The concert opened with the Ballade in A minor, Op. 33 by British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.  The work, composed in 1898, marked the professional conducting debut of the young man who was born out of wedlock into one of London’s poorest neighborhoods in 1875.  The Ballade is in the mid-Romantic style of Tchaikovsky and Dvořák – with similar orchestration.  Hrůša and the orchestra contributed a performance marked by sensible tempi and technical polish.  As I’d never heard this music before, I can’t compare it to any other performances or recordings.

Elgar’s Cello Concerto was initially a flop when it was premiered in 1919.  The work’s failure, the result of an unrehearsed performance, deeply wounded the composer (not for the first time in history, as Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony suffered the same fate as conducted by a drunken Alexander Glazunov).  The concerto did not achieve notability until the 1960s when Jaqueline du Pré began championing the piece – but still it’s not a repertoire staple.  To be sure, the concerto is a stark, challenging work.   Composed in the aftermath of a serious illness and during the First World War, it features moments of soaring lyricism contrasted with an almost agonized temperament – a world away from the same composer’s Pomp and Circumstance marches or even the Enigma Variations. 

Sheku Kanneh-Mason became a sensation in 2018 when he played at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle – a televised event seen by some two billion people.  At the time I was stuck by the beauty of Kanneh-Mason’s playing and surety of his technique.  Needless to say, anyone who can play with such serenity and finish in front of so many demonstrates the quality of grace under pressure.  To the Elgar Concerto, Kanneh-Mason brought impeccable technique, variety of tonal shadings, and an ample dynamic range  - all put in service to the music.  Hrůša and the orchestra collaborated with an intensity of expression that matched the soloist.  The performance was followed by a very enthusiastic and sustained ovation, which led Kanneh-Mason to gift the audience with an encore: a brief contemplative piece which was unfamiliar to me.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason receives a well-earned ovation.

I first heard Dvořák’s Sixth Symphony as a teenager, listening to a scratchy 78rpm album of the work found in my grandmother’s basement as played by the Cleveland Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf.  Aside from the third movement Scherzo, a delightful Furiant characterized by alternating two-beat and three-beat measures and surprise cadences, I found the work unmemorable.  But I was only about 16 years old, and my musical ideas were not fully formed – if they ever are.  I’ve heard the work several times over the years, and while there are worthy passages in every movement, along with fine orchestration, I find the work does not exceed the sum of its parts the way the composer’s last three Symphonies do.  Hrůša led the opening movement in an expansive manner, with dashes of orchestral color that revealed the work’s rustic character.  The work’s second movement Agagio was serene and soulful, with lovely woodwind playing.  The Furiant went at a bouncing tempo that was, well, furious, with the movement’s tricky rhythms tossed-off impeccably – an example of brilliant orchestra playing that resulted in an audible “whoo!” from a member of the audience.  Following on that, the finale insinuated itself into the proceedings with merriment until an unbuttoned, declamatory coda that, as they say, brought the house down.