Anxious Bernstein and rushed Shostakovich at Severance

Last night’s Cleveland Orchestra concert at Severance Hall featured guest conductor Rafael Payare in two 20^th Century works that seem equally relevant to our time.

Payare was joined by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet for Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, titled “The Age of Anxiety” after W. H. Auden’s epic poem, which serves as a program for the work.  I know little about the poem, but the Symphony is the work of a young composer filled with ideas, chomping at the bit to put his stamp on the musical world, yet still finding his voice.  In Bernstein’s case, it was a distinctly American voice.  Each of the six movements has its own individual mood and style, from the desolate improvisatory tonality of the Prologue, to the twelve-tone motif of the Dirge, to the jazzy energy of the Masque.   

Thibaudet brought his usual brand of musical virtuosity to the piano part.  His performance enforced my conviction that Thibaudet remains one of our era’s most interesting, eclectic pianists – far more so than the latest stock of competition winners and “influencer” pianists who merely rote out the same standard repertoire.  Payare and the orchestra contributed a performance noted for a burnished quality of tone one does not usually hear in Bernstein’s work, and the performers were greeted with a sustained ovation.

I noticed after intermission that the audience had dwindled from about three-fourths to two-thirds of capacity.  Perhaps the early exit folks were expecting the opening work to sound like something out of West Side Story, which was definitely not the case.   

Payare returned to lead the orchestra in Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.  The Cleveland Orchestra has a long history with that work, first performing it in 1941 under then-music director Artur Rodziński, who recorded it with the orchestra shortly thereafter.  It has been heard with some regularity since, including a memorable performance led by Stanisław Skrowaczewski.  As a work written under the ominous shadow of Josef Stalin, it seems to equally reflect the current situation in Russia under Vladimir Putin – at a time when artists, journalists, and others unwilling to toe the party line are being disappeared.

Last night’s rendition, more a run-through than a performance, lacked the characteristics that made Skrowaczewski’s performance so memorable.  Tempos in the outer movements were rushed, so that Shostakovich’s opening theme lacked pathos and drama, and the menacing development started off by the piano lacked contrast.  The coda lacked the irony which has become a mainstay of modern Shostakovich interpretation.  Overall, a surfacy affair.