Friday, August 22, 2025

Chopin and Rachmaninoff with Nobuyuki Tsujii and Slobodeniouk at Severance

2025’s Summers at Severance series concluded Thursday with guest conductor Dima Slobodeniouk and guest pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii.

Tsujii is 36 years old and hails from Japan.  He has been blind since birth but that didn’t prevent him from tying for the Gold Medal at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.  Based on what I heard last night, the prize was entirely deserved.  He and the orchestra performed Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21, a concerto which has been somewhat underappreciated on account of its orchestration which is sort of “meh.”  It’s also a finger twisting challenge for even the most gifted pianists.  Tsujii’s mastery of the work was not merely a question of technique, which would be superb even in a sighted person; Tsujii’s interpretation was entirely his own without resorting to eccentricities.  The pianist avoided unnecessary swooning rubati, instead using constantly shifting dynamics and coloration for expression.  Slobodeniouk and the orchestra presented a lovely accompaniment, with greater clarity than is often heard in this work.  For example, there was a melodic line in the celli that I’d never taken particular notice of in recordings, and the brief sequence in the finale where the strings play col legno battuto (with the wooden side of the bow) was appropriately charming and rustic.   

The performance was rapturously received, and the pianist’s encore was a staggering yet musical rendition of Liszt’s La Campanella. 


Following intermission Slobodeniouk returned to lead the orchestra in Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27.  The Cleveland Orchestra has a long association with this symphony, being the first orchestra to record the work in 1928.  The orchestra’s library still has the conductor’s score used at those sessions,  marked in the composer’s own hand with the cuts made to fit the work onto twelve 78rpm sides.  Slobodeniouk performed the work without cuts, as has fortunately become customary these days.  Initially, the first movement moved tepidly along, only catching fire during the long development section where the violas play those low dissonant notes.  From there things improved and Slobodeniouk brilliantly drove the climax and coda home.  The scherzo which followed was on point, with brilliant pacing and voicing of the central fugal section.  The third movement had a lovely plasticity of phrasing, with alternate tension and relief.  This led to a beautifully expansive finale with wonderful use of dynamics and eschewing of the cheap sentimentality occasionally heard in this work.  At the work’s rhythmic conclusion, the conductors eyeglasses flew from his head and into the viola section, where they were promptly retrieved by a violist.

The orchestra’s 2025-2026 season starts in September, and I have already purchased tickets for 20 of the performances. 






Thursday, August 14, 2025

90 years of Social Security

Every once in a while, I like to peruse Redfin and other realty sites and look over house listings.  As they say, the three most important things in real estate are location, location, and location.  It continues to amaze me how a modest mid-century modern three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Palm Springs will sell for over a million dollars.  Despite the increase in local property values over the past five years, one still gets far more for one’s money in northeast Ohio. 

Lately I’ve been looking at homes in Shaker Heights.  There is a section in southeast Shaker with some very attractive two-family homes – although they appear to be single family homes to the casual observer.  Many of these homes have a larger upstairs unit on the second and third floors, and a smaller unit on the first floor.  Closer to the center of Shaker, there are numerous homes with the following layout: social spaces (living and/or family room, sunroom, dining room, and kitchen) on the first floor; bedrooms with two full bathrooms on the second floor; and small bedrooms with a small bathroom (often with a tub but no shower) on the top floor.  I find this layout interesting as the top floor would be ideal for flex space: workout room, office, or guest bedroom.  Nearly all of these houses were built prior to 1930.

What’s the story behind these houses?  Simply, the top floor was meant for servants – usually one cook and one housekeeper.  Before the Great Depression there was a surplus of people who worked as servants.  Most were single younger females or widows and, in the era before the minimum wage was established, they worked for a pittance with no benefits aside from room and board.  Often the servants’ quarters were accessible only through a separate staircase.

My maternal grandfather came of age in a family which had servants under this setup.  He died long before I was born, but I remember visiting his sister’s home in Columbus.  Even as a small child I was impressed with the place, especially the door from the kitchen to the dining room that opened both ways and, yes, they had a servant.

With the growth of the middle-class that accompanied the post-war economy, the live-in servant paradigm came to an end.  In particular, older people were not obligated to work until they died thanks to the Social Security Act, which was signed into law 90 years ago today.



Politicians of both parties, but especially Republicans, have been tampering with Social Security for the last few decades, to the programs detriment.  Early in his second term, President George W. Bush tried to move the Social Security Trust fund toward private investments, which was met with widespread disapproval and began to fracture his political coalition – a fracturing which accelerated after his administration’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina.  Others within the right-wing have tried to mislead people into believing that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

This need only be stated for those who don’t understand how Ponzi schemes work: Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme; it is an insurance program which has worked extraordinarily well for 90 years.  As with any insurance program, not every payer of premium receives a benefit, e.g., some die before they reach retirement age.

Today, Social Security is in profound danger of collapsing.  A few simple fixes would make the Social Security trust fund solvent into the 22nd Century: First, raise the cap on taxable income.  Second, gradually, over time, raise the retirement age by six-month increments every five years commencing in ten years.

Democrats seem unwilling to fight for this multi-generational contract which has saved literally tens of millions of senior citizens from poverty ridden old age.  MAGA Republicans seem desirous of ending the program – even though it is revenue neutral. Part of this worsened by their clamping down of immigration, since migrant workers pay into Social Security but will not draw benefits unless they become citizens. As Harry Truman once said, “The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know."  Truman, an economic populist who tried to institute national health insurance, would be appalled not only by Republican actions, but by the lack of Democratic fire over the issue.  Even Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, who believed in Keynesian economics, would be shocked at the direction their party has taken.

The economic goal of today’s MAGA Republicans is not merely to destroy the social safety net which has helped prevent another Great Depression, they want to take us back to the age of the Robber Barrons and possibly instill a neo-feudalistic economic system.

Unless the average citizen fights back, that’s exactly what they are going to do.   

Friday, August 1, 2025

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.