Widmann and Strauss at Severance

Conductor Daniel Harding and violist Antoine Tamestit were the featured guests at Severance Hall this weekend.  But Harding strode on stage without the soloist to begin the concert’s first work, Jörg Widmann’s Viola Concerto, as Tamestit was already seated in a concealed area of the stage from which he emerged shortly after the work began.  The Concerto, finished in 2015, relies heavily on choreography as the soloist makes his way to musically converse and combat with other instruments (placed unconventionally) during the course of the work’s 25 minutes.  The problem for this listener, or perhaps I should state observer, was that the on-stage antics, which included the Tamestit brandishing his viola bow like a sword and even shouting, became more memorable than the music itself.  This was less a concerto than performance art in search of a genuine musical idea.  As the performance progressed, I noticed several audience members playing with their phones and, surprisingly, it was those same members who I observed applauding the most enthusiastically at the work’s conclusion.  An encore was not offered. 

The audience was noticeably larger for the concert’s post-intermission work, Richard Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony. The Strauss work dates to 1915, 100 years earlier than the Widmann, but seems timeless.  Harding and the orchestra presented the work in all its awe-inspiring majesty, from the mystery of Nacht to the terror of Gefahrvolle Augenblicke, everything was heard with a multi-layered clarity and burnished tone that marked the antithesis of the flabby sogginess that marks too much Strauss playing.