Kabeláč, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich under Hrůša at Severance

During the early 1940s, George Szell was one of many musicians displaced by the war in Europe and living in the United States.  Arturo Toscanini, by then a living legend and head of the NBC Symphony, invited Szell to guest conduct his orchestra in 1941.  Szell led two concerts, one of which can be heard here.  The rehearsals for those concerts were fraught, as Toscanini did not approve of Szell’s rehearsal technique and let Szell know in explosive terms.  But the quality of the NBC performance under Szell speaks for itself.  Contrast that with Szell’s own behavior two decades later.  By then, Toscanini was dead, Szell was music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and had raised their standards to the point that Cleveland was considered to have the best orchestra in the United States – perhaps even the world.  Leopold Stokowski, as much a living legend as Toscanini had been and a polar opposite to Szell musically, visited for a series of guest concerts.  Szell was present at the first rehearsal as the mercurial conductor began altering balances and encouraged the strings to bow freely.  The orchestra manager, sitting next to Szell, feared Szell may explode much as Toscanini had done in 1941.  Instead, as Stokowski began conducting a Cleveland Orchestra that suddenly sounded like the pre-1936 Philadelphia Orchestra, Szell looked toward the manager and smiled.  In Szell’s smile was the implication that “his” orchestra could turn on a dime and serve the musical needs of any conductor. 

Last night’s concert, under guest conductor Jakub Hrůša and dedicated to 20^th Century music, proved the Cleveland Orchestra can still turn on a dime when needed.  Whether the results were to the advantage of the music depended on the composition and listener’s taste. 

The first work, by Czech composer Miloslav Kabeláč, was entirely new to me and new to the orchestra.  Mystery of Time is essentially a mood piece, beginning quietly and slowly and building in volume and speed until a raucous conclusion.  Parts of the work reminded me of Howard Shore’s score to Silence of the Lambs which was, of course, composed decades later – so Shore may have been influenced by this piece.

The Hamburg Steinway was then brought on stage for Stravinsky’s Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, featuring soloist Emanuel Ax – a genial and welcome presence here.  I’ve only heard this work once before, in a less than convincing recording under Robert Craft’s direction with soloist Philippe Entremont.   Hrůša and Ax brought a more unified conception to the work – which can sound disjointed in the wrong hands – which sacrificed nothing in terms of spontaneity and wit.  The performance was warmly received and Ax gifted the audience with an encore: Chopin’s Waltz in A minor, poetically played.

The second half of the program was dedicated to Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony – a work which the orchestra has played since it was “hot off the press.”  The story of this work’s composition is so well known it hardly needs repeating, but here it is:  Shostakovich’s previous works, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and The Limpid Stream, were met with official disapproval, which in 1930s Russia carried significant threat.  He set aside his Fourth Symphony, then in rehearsals, and began composing on the Fifth, which was touted in the state-controlled press as “a Soviet artist’s creative response to justified criticism".  The work’s premiere was triumphant and restored Shostakovich’s reputation among Soviet power-brokers.  It is a work of the most profound suffering, with every appearance of major key relief a trap-door into more heartbreak, until the finale where there appears to be a sense of victory – at least on the surface.  It wasn’t until decades later that it was revealed that the symphony’s “triumphant” coda was intentionally hollow – a depiction of a man being told he’s never had it so good while being savagely beaten.  The work’s conclusion is thus, in many ways, similar to the protagonist’s “love” for Big Brother at the end of George Orwell’s 1984 – after being brainwashed into believing that love is hate, and vice versa.

Hrůša’s interpretation was one that emphasized the work’s extremes.  I’ve never heard the Cleveland Orchestra play so quietly or loudly: softly enough that they were barely audible even on the main floor; loudly enough that some players were pushed beyond their normal tonal capacity.  While this served to bring out certain elements of the piece, in particular the jingoism of the second movement, there were a number of wrong notes from woodwinds and brass, as well as faulty balances.  On the other hand, there were elements of the scoring that I’d never heard before, in particular during the climax of the work’s searing Largo.  Further, Hrůša emphasized the dissonance in some of the part-writing that other conductors, in particular Stokowski and Bernstein, glossed over.  This was not a heartfelt Shostakovich Fifth, of the sort led by Stanisław Skrowaczewski in 2015, but a raw performance which uncovered the brutality of Stalin’s Russia.  It was one of many legitimate approaches to this complicated work, which held the audience’s attention and roused them at the end.

The Myth of Artistic Insight Into the Human Condition

Recently, I unfriended someone on Facebook.  The person was a pianist of limited ability who had sent me a friend request - which I accepted because we had several virtual friends in common.  When it comes to Facebook, I accept about half of the friend requests sent to me – either on the basis of mutual friends, mutual interests, or geography. 

I unfriended this person as the result of his misogynistic rant where, in the crudest terms imaginable, he railed against Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and other members of the #MeToo movement.  For the record, I believe Dr. Ford’s claims were credible and warranted a thorough investigation.  Brett Kavanaugh’s unhinged reaction to the claims was an indicator that he is not emotionally fit to sit on the high court – regardless of how one felt about his judicial philosophy.  The Senate thought differently, unfortunately.   But my virtual ex-friend’s response made Kavanaugh seem like a paragon of balanced impartiality.  His explicit references to several sexual acts made it clear he had been thinking, and likely fantasizing, about these acts for some time.

I would never have accepted this person’s friend request if I’d known he held these views, that he was so immature and possibly unstable.  While I certainly have friends, both online and in real life, who are Republicans – he crossed a line that I would not stand for.  Indeed, I ceased contact with a relative for this very reason (sadly, I expected this to happen, as he’s been a bully since childhood).

There was a time when I thought people with certain characteristics were likely to be of higher sensitivity, intelligence, or insight.  I’ve never believed that held true on a racial or ethnic basis.  But when I was young, naïve, and coming out of the closet, I labored under the false notion that, for example, LGBT persons were more disposed to be open minded based on their coming out experience.  Then I encountered LGBT people who were racist, trashy, vulgar, and downright stupid – and that notion was put to rest.  For a longer period, I though the same applied to Classical musicians.  Again, that notion has gone the way of the dodo. 

The incidence of classical musicians engaging in behavior once thought more the provenance of the most decadent popular stars has been on the rise – or perhaps it’s merely that this behavior is finally being reported.  The Cleveland Orchestra was in the headlines recently due to accusations against two players – who have since been dismissed from the orchestra.  The accusations centered on behavior that George Szell would certainly not have tolerated.  But the question arises – in the atmosphere of the 1960s, would Szell and orchestral management even have known about such behavior?  Doubtful, judging by how Szell was clueless about the behavior of his protégé James Levine.  

Of course, the sexual escapades of Classical musicians from Liszt, to Toscanini, to Arthur Rubinstein have become the stuff of legend.  Whatever their faults, these were sophisticated, well-read men.  But there are a good many classical musicians who, I’ve learned from experience, are racist, trashy, vulgar, and downright stupid.  Some may be intelligent, but entirely blinkered within their careers and the center of their own world.  And even those with artistic insight are too often lacking insight into the human condition.

Take, for example, Wilhelm Furtwängler.  The conductor’s decision to stay in Germany after the Nazis took over the country has been the fodder for debate, some of it vehement, for 80 years.  I’ll skip that overly discussed topic for now.  Seldom mentioned is that, outside Furtwängler’s obvious gifts on the podium, his was an entirely provincial mentality, shuttered to matters outside music – and his musical insight was mostly confined to that of his home region.  Nowhere is Furtwängler’s provincialism clearer than in his desperate letters to Bayreuth during the 1930s, objecting to the presence of an Italian conductor (Toscanini) at the high temple of German music.  While there are Classical musicians who are evolved people gifted with general intelligence, the list of those who are socially inept, politically obtuse, and just plain stuck in their own world is easily as long.  I would suspect the percentage of evolved versus devolved popular musicians – or performers of other genres – is approximately the same.

Another music blogger* has opined that “Classical musicians are artists, popular musicians are performers”.  That sweeping generalization – arrogant, ignorant, and errant – is pure elitist balderdash.  But it brings up the question: What constitutes an artist?  I don’t consider performers – whether dancers, instrumentalists, singers, or actors – to be artists.  If these performers had a hand in creating the work they are performing, that would be exceptional.  But when it comes to classical music today, few performers could be correctly termed artists, any more than a museum curator who decides on a frame for a painting.  Over the course of music history, there were those who were both creators and performers – including Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff.  While some performers, including Stokowski and Horowitz, were more creative with the source material (i.e., the score) ultimately, they were still performers.  Partially as a result of faulty, pedantic conservatory training, the dividing line between performer and composer has become starker and less permeable in recent decades.  Creativity within the bounds of performance has been banished – although there are a few performers today, like Arcadi Volodos, who are more imaginative than others.  But it’s small wonder that many classical musicians cannot improvise, cannot learn even the basics of a composition without the score, who perish at the thought of an onstage memory lapse – the notion of composing a cadenza to, say, a Mozart Concerto, is anathema to them.  When all they are doing is reproducing the dots on a page, how can they possibly call themselves artists?  In reality, they are glorified manual laborers.  Lest that remark seem needlessly dismissive and even cruel, let me point out that I was once a manual laborer in a piano factory, and while the brochures advertising our hand-built pianos touted the builders as “artisans”, I doubt even the most pretentious among us would have considered ourselves “artists”. 

* This was the same blogger who began latching onto Kanye West when the hip-hop star voiced his support for Donald Trump – so it’s utterly transparent where this blogger is coming from.

Debussy, Pintscher, and Ravel at Severance

Last week, Matthias Pintscher served as guest conductor at Severance.  This week, Pintscher was present in spirit if not in body as one of the featured composers.  More on that in a moment.  This week’s guest conductor was Alain Altinoglu, the featured soloist the orchestra’s principle flautist, Joshua Smith.  The hall was nearly sold out, no doubt mostly due to the popularity of the program’s final work, Ravel’s Bolero.

The program opened with Altinoglu’s own suite from Debussy’s opera Pelléas and Mélisande.  The orchestra has some familiarity with this, one of the composer’s least played works, having performed the complete opera two seasons ago.  They also recorded excerpts in the 1940s under then music director Erich Leinsdorf.  Some have complained that Pelléas and Mélisande lacks a hummable tune, which is valid as far as it goes – it eschews many of the features some opera lovers thrive on: epic spectacle, stratospheric arias, elaborate plot twists.  But the composer’s stream of consciousness creation has benefits for those who are willing to listen on a more elevated level.   The suite – partly based on incidental music the Debussy had to write at the last moment to cover for stage changes – was convincingly presented by Altinoglu.  The transparent, shimmering textures alone were a delight, along with the most delicate tone painting.

Pintscher’s “Transir”, a de-facto flute concerto, was even more challenging.  While there are those who did – and some still do – regard Stravinsky’s music as avant-garde, the Russian composer used the orchestra in a rather conventional manner.  Not so with “Transir”.  Numerous instruments were altered to some extent, including the use of paper clips in the strings to create a unique sonority.  Further, each string player often had an individual line to play, which would challenge any ensemble.  To say nothing of flautist Joshua Smith’s task, who’s technique included “multiphonics” (creating multiple notes at once), tapping on the instrument, “jet-whistle”, flutter-tongue, and breath effects.  Everything that could be perceived as unusual for both soloist and orchestra.  I simply had no idea a flute could be made to sound this way – yet it remained musical.  Altinoglu proved an excellent collaborator, with the orchestra demonstrating its mettle in a highly detailed, but mostly quiet accompaniment.  Smith was rightly awarded with a standing ovation.   

The program’s second half was dedicated to Ravel.  The Spanish Rhapsody featured sensitive use of dynamics yet seemed somewhat sectionalized.  Pavane for a Dead Princess was beautifully paced and somewhat muted – a grief observed rather than experienced.  What can one say about Bolero that hasn’t been said before?  It’s probably the best example of an orchestral crescendo this side of Rossini.  Altinoglu established a sensible pace, kept the balances in check, and let the soloists do their thing.  The individuality of various solos, in particular a flirtatiously sexy saxophone solo from Steven Banks enhanced, but never distracted from, the musical line and inevitability.

My enjoyment of Bolero was dampened by a woman in front of me humming along with the main tine, and several audience members trotting out their cell phones to tape parts of the proceedings – in defiance of Severance’s strict policy against doing so.  The head usher tried to intercede several times but eventually gave up.  Poor man.  

Rachmaninoff and Bartok with Gerstein and Pintscher

It’s hard to believe that Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto didn’t meet with immediate success when he brought it to the United States during his 1909-1910 tour.  Critical response was mixed and audiences generally preferred to hear his Second Concerto.  The work wasn’t performed with the Cleveland Orchestra until 19 years later by Vladimir Horowitz during his first American tour.  Rachmaninoff himself played it at Severance in 1932.  Both pianists collaborated with Nikolai Sokoloff – the Cleveland Orchestra’s first music director and a friend of the composer’s.   

Last night featured returning guests: pianist Kirill Gerstein and conductor Matthias Pintscher.  Gerstein most definitely has the chops for Rachmaninoff’s Third – considered by some by some as the most challenging in the standard repertoire.  (Although some pianists have told me they consider the Brahms Second Concerto more difficult on account of its awkwardness, Busoni’s massive concerto – not part of the standard repertoire – must take the cake as it’s grueling 75 minutes long.)  There was no sense of strain even during the work’s most thorny passages. But Gerstein imbued the work with a sense of musical virtuosity very much in the spirit of the composer’s own rendition – as preserved via his 1939 recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy.  This is not to say that Gerstein wasn’t his own man, interpretively.  For example, Gerstein played the work complete – without the disfiguring cuts the composer began to favor in his later years.  Also, the pianist played the heavier, more chordal of the first movement’s two printed cadenzas – a decision with which I disagree, although the passion and conviction with which it was played were unmistakable.  Further, the approach was a bit more imaginative when it came to variations of tempo and the use of inner voices – particularly during the first movement.  This was a performance who prefer Rachmaninoff without the treacly goo which has been imposed on it by sundry performers – a Rachmaninoff with its dignity intact.

Gerstein was rewarded with an extensive ovation, and returned the warmth with a brief encore: Debussy’s The Girl with the Flaxen Hair. 

As with neighbors and neighborhoods, it only takes one inconsiderate audience member to impair the experience at a symphonic concert.  Last night’s example was provided by a clod who spoke at full voice during the concerto’s rather quiet opening – then dropping an object during another quiet moment later.

Following intermission, Pintscher returned to the stage to conduct the orchestra in Bartok’s complete ballet score, The Wooden Prince – a work with which I’m only passingly familiar.  Here is an example of how Pintscher’s background as a composer enhanced the performance.  A sense of unity permeated a work which could easily devolve into a series of dance sections.  Pintscher skillfully led the orchestra through the work’s myriad challenges and there was characterful playing during the English Horn and Trumpet solos.  First Associate Concertmaster Peter Otto rose to the occasion with his solo during the Princess’s Waltz.  All earned the warm ovation the followed. 

While main floor was at near capacity for the Concerto (including a piano student in front of me who was silently replicating the work’s passages), many left during intermission.  Bartok still has the reputation of being a “difficult” composer to hear among some.  While it’s sad there are those members who are unwilling to challenge themselves, the bottom line is that at least their tickets were fully paid for.