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.