Willful Dvořák and stunning Tchaikovsky with Inkinen and Hadelich at Severance

Saturday evening’s concert at Severance featured guest conductor Pietari Inkinen making his Cleveland Orchestra debut, along with returning violinist Augustin Hadelich. 

The concert opened with Dvořák’s Othello Overture, Op. 93.  It’s not one of the composer’s well-known works, despite the familiar subject matter of Shakespeare’s play. Composed in 1892, it wasn’t performed in Cleveland until a century later – a noteworthy omission for an orchestra that has long championed the unfamiliar.  The chief problem is an overabundance of ideas, intended to depict specific scenarios within the plot, which are presented but not developed.  I was left with no desire to investigate this music more fully.

Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, Op. 35 is, of course, another matter.  It’s a work which combines Tchaikovsky’s knack for memorable tunes, great passion, a dramatic through-line, secure architecture, and idiomatic writing which tests the limits of instrument and instrumentalist.  The composer was assisted by his probable lover Iosif Kotek, a gifted violinist who advised the composer on aspects of the violin part.  He was the initial dedicatee of the work until Tchaikovsky, cautious about his personal reputation, switched the dedication to Leopold Auer – who was initially uninterested in the piece.  Eduard Hanslick’s notoriously hostile review, in which he ranted that the music “stinks to the ear” and that “the violin was not played but beaten black and blue” has gone down as one of the most wrong-headed musical criticisms of all time.  Soloist Hadelich is no stranger to Cleveland.  He turned in a memorable performance of Dvořák’s Violin Concerto six years ago.  Hadelich has everything needed for Tchaikovsky: an immaculately superlative technique, a vocal – almost throaty – tone, plenty of temperament, and the inherent taste to know just how much to stretch a melody or push the dynamics.  All these gifts were put into the service of musical virtuosity and a bona-fide masterpiece – no doubt the finest of Tchaikovsky’s four concertos.  Hadelich was ably assisted by Inkinen and the orchestra, but one felt this was mostly the soloist’s conception.  A rousing ovation followed, and Hadelich gifted the audience with an encore – the name of the work was not announced, but it sounded like it was composed by Fritz Kreisler. 

Iosif Kotek with Tchaikovsky in 1877.

Following intermission, Inkinen returned to lead the orchestra in Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88 – and this performance was problematic indeed.  First was the issue of tempo relationships.  The opening movement was overdriven so the merriment of the music sounded hard driven – as if the music was on cocaine.  The second movement adagio dragged, while the allegretto was missing the Mendelssohnian lightness inherent in the writing.  The finale featured a general pulling apart of the structure so that the final accelerando was anti-climactic.  Further, there was little of the transparency and attention to balance one is accustomed to hearing from this orchestra.  I was far from the only person to feel this way.  An unusually large number of patrons left after the second and third movements.

Still, the concert was worth attending for the Tchaikovsky.