Late masterworks by Sibelius and Beethoven at Severance

Tonight’s Cleveland Orchestra concert had the highest attendance I’ve seen in many months, with an especially attentive audience on hand.

Tapiola, Op. 112, is one of Sibelius’s last works.  The tone poem derives its name from Tapio, the forest spirit, and the music gives the sense of Finnish nature and open spaces.  Music director Franz Welser-Möst and the orchestra brought to the work an unerring sense of pacing and balance, with an especially bracing storm episode – a section which must have been a major influence on film composer Herbert Stothart when he was writing the music to accompany the cyclone in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. 

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, was the last of the composer’s works to have a grand premiere – just three years before the composer’s death.  Nearly every great conductor and orchestra have performed this work, and this is the third performance I’ve heard led by Welser-Möst (including the Deutsche Grammophon recording, which unfortunately is hampered by middling sonics).  The opening movement was as propulsive as the 2018 performance I attended at Severance, but there was less of the sense of “desperation” that Beethoven indicated in the score.  Initially it was a bit plush until the middle section when everything began to gel.  The second movement, Vivace, included all the repeats and markedly clear timpani strikes.  The third movement, which alternates between Adagio and Andante, was a balance of majesty and poetry – while stripped of all pomposity.  It was in the finale where the night’s greatness lay: the celli and bass rejections of the thematic quotes from the earlier movements had a spielart, or speaking quality, seldom heard in this piece.  The famous theme was presented with a sense of inevitability until the “horrific fanfare” from the movement’s beginning was repeated and bass-baritone Dashon Burton sang his first solo.  The little march that follows Beethoven's exultant “vor Gott” was unusually quick and for a moment it seemed as if tenor Miles Mykkanen was struggling to match Welser-Möst's pace.  But they quickly realigned and from there, orchestra, chorus and soloists masterfully presented Beethoven’s oratorical vision, which included subtle nods to Gregorian chants, Handel’s Messiah, and Mozart’s Magic Flute leading to the composer’s world embracing coda.  The audience erupted in ecstatic cheers at the final note.  Truly this music, which has too often been misused to promote philosophies at odds with Beethoven’s own beliefs, was a much needed balm for these troubled times. 

Presentations of Beethoven’s Ninth are rightfully special events.  I’m glad Welser-Möst brought it back before his tenure with the orchestra comes to an end.