Last night’s concert at Severance saw guest conductor Gustavo Gimeno on the podium and the return of the Labéque sisters to Cleveland. As with many concerts this season, the program was a nice mix of the familiar and the new, with the focus on music with connections to France which revealed the diversity behind the term “French music” – from the sensuality of Ravel to the almost Brahmsian Classicism of Franck.
The concert opened with Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, the
second time I’ve heard it here in recent years.
Whenever I hear the suite, I find myself missing the additional music
that was created to expand the work into a full ballet. The performance was paced naturally, with
beautiful washes of color applied in Laideronnette and The Enchanted
Garden.
The Concerto for Two pianos by American composer Bryce Dessner received its first Cleveland performance last
night. The work is in three movements,
none of which could be considered slow. The
Concerto, although distinctly modern, is firmly tonal and comprehensible even
to lay people. It also has the benefit
of being clearly and creatively orchestrated, and the piano writing is a
demonstration of the term “pianistic.” The pianists, conductor, and orchestra
collaborated in a performance that was virtuosic in the best sense of the word. As is customary, our orchestra played the complex
piece as if they’d known it all their lives.
The performance was greeted by a deserved and sustained ovation, and the
Labéque sisters graced the audience with a apropos encore: “Maria” from West
Side Story, in memory of Stephen Sondheim who passed away the previous day.
The concert’s second half was devoted to Franck’s Symphony in D minor. The performance began promisingly, with the mystery
of the work’s opening kept intact by Gimeno’s scrupulous observation of the
section’s rests, which too many well-known conductors gloss over. From there he seemed to go into auto-pilot and,
while I couldn’t find much wrong with the performance, nor could I find much
that was meritorious - beyond the technical polish of the playing. In terms of pacing, the tempi suited the work
and the acoustics at Severance. Gimeno
kept a tight rein over the orchestra and there was a sense of movement even in
the Allegretto. But the dynamics ranged
from mezzo-piano to fortissimo and the interweaving lines one hears so clearly
from, say, Monteux, were obscured in favor of textual flatness. The finale was exciting and brought an
enthusiastic response from the small, socially distanced audience.
I noticed the unobtrusive presence of cameras in the
auditorium, so those with the Adella app may be able to watch this concert in
the not too distant future.
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