FDR and his Admirals

 

Franklin Roosevelt was fond of using the quote above, not from false modesty but because his ego was secure enough that he could acknowledge his own blind spots. He actively sought out people who could illuminate them, despising "yes men" who would later write "kiss ass and tell" memoirs.

This stands in marked contrast to the Trump administration. Donald Trump's ego is similarly outsized but underneath lies deep insecurity. Could anyone imagine FDR, if such technology existed in the 1940s, having 3am social media meltdowns?

I won’t review Trump’s first term, from the corruption to his mishandling of the emerging COVID pandemic. His tampering with the military during his second term has led to disastrous results throughout the services. Under the “leadership” of Secretary of Defense/War “Whiskey” Pete Hegseth, Judge Advocates General have been dismissed. An active-duty service member tells me many enlisted find this alarming—JAGs interpret the law and advise on whether questionable orders may be illegal. Hegseth gutted upper ranks, whining they were "DEI," replacing competent officers with toadies or leaving posts vacant.

There is a direct line between that and the disaster unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz, particularly aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln: troops unfed, ships falling out of repair, care packages undelivered. More on that shortly. First, some history.

Roosevelt's Team

FDR assembled an unusually strong—and occasionally combustible—group of admirals during World War II. What made them remarkable wasn't uniformity of thought, but competence and shared purpose. That makes the quote above rather apt.

Ernest King became Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet after Pearl Harbor, then Chief of Naval Operations in March 1942. Brilliant, aggressive, and notoriously difficult—there was a wartime joke, attributed to his daughter, that he was "the most even-tempered person in the Navy: he is always in a rage."

Strategically, King ensured the Pacific didn't become a secondary theater. He accepted Roosevelt’s "Germany First" directive but constantly fought for resources to attack Japan simultaneously. Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands campaign owed much to his determination.

His relationship with Roosevelt was fascinating. FDR understood naval affairs unusually well for a president—he had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson—and consequently interacted with senior naval officers with considerable confidence. King was one of the relatively few people formidable enough to push back.

Then there was William D. Leahy, probably the admiral closest personally to Roosevelt.

Leahy had already been Chief of Naval Operations before the war and later became Roosevelt's Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief. Leahy's personality was almost the inverse of King's. He was restrained, politically sophisticated and trusted deeply by Roosevelt. As Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, he functioned like today's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, sitting beside FDR at wartime conferences, mediating between the president and military chiefs. While King ran the Navy, Leahy helped Roosevelt manage the entire war effort.

The great operational commander in the Pacific was, of course, Chester W. Nimitz.

After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt selected Nimitz to command the Pacific Fleet on the recommendation of Navy Secretary Frank Knox. It was one of the most consequential personnel decisions of the war. Nimitz possessed what King lacked: exceptional skill at managing talented people with incompatible personalities.

Within six months, Nimitz presided over Midway. More importantly, he created an environment where commanders could recover from mistakes—crucial in a war where decisions were made with incomplete intelligence thousands of miles from Washington.

Two of Nimitz's most important subordinates illustrate this.

Admirals Halsey and Spruance.

The Commanders

William Halsey Jr. was the aggressive fighter. "Bull" Halsey became enormously popular with sailors and the public—the commander you wanted when audacity mattered. But his aggressiveness sometimes outran his judgment. His decisions during Leyte Gulf remain controversial, particularly chasing the Japanese carrier force north while leaving Leyte's approaches exposed.

His counterpart was Raymond A. Spruance.

Spruance was cerebral, quiet, and methodical. He commanded the carrier force at Midway despite not being an aviator, making extraordinarily disciplined decisions under pressure. Later he led the Fifth Fleet during major Central Pacific operations, including the Marianas.

One of the Navy's cleverest organizational arrangements was that Halsey's Third Fleet and Spruance's Fifth Fleet were essentially the same fleet.

When Halsey commanded, it was Third Fleet; when Spruance took over, it became Fifth Fleet. Their staffs rotated, allowing one team to plan while the other executed. The system exploited their different strengths: Halsey supplied aggression and morale; Spruance supplied analytical precision.

Richmond K. Turner, less famous than Nimitz or Halsey, was indispensable—one of America's foremost amphibious-warfare commanders, perfecting the extraordinarily complex business of moving tens of thousands of troops, landing craft, naval gunfire, and aircraft onto hostile islands on precise timetables.

Thomas C. Kinkaid's Seventh Fleet operated closely with Douglas MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific, requiring considerable diplomatic skill given the tensions between MacArthur's headquarters and the Navy.

The Synthesis

The remarkable thing about Roosevelt's senior naval leadership, then, is how complementary it became:

• Roosevelt chose people and arbitrated strategy.
• Leahy coordinated military leadership around the president.
• King drove naval strategy and demanded resources.
• Nimitz managed the Pacific war and its commanders.
• Spruance provided calculated operational judgment.
• Halsey supplied aggressive offensive leadership.
• Turner mastered amphibious warfare.
• Kinkaid made naval power work inside MacArthur's command structure.

They weren't a harmonious family. King could be spectacularly abrasive; MacArthur and the Navy had serious strategic disagreements; senior commanders occasionally thought counterparts were making dreadful decisions.

But Roosevelt didn't need harmony. He needed competence.

Which brings us back to that FDR quote. He wasn't claiming to be the smartest man in the room. One of his genuine talents was arranging matters so that extremely smart—and very different—people were in the room with him.

Logistics Then and Now

Then there is the question of Naval logistics – the most important of which is feeding sailors. Wars are not fought on empty stomachs. That was true in 1942 and it’s true in 2026.  

Logistical failure is what is impacting ships in the Strait of Hormuz today.

What passes for a meal on the USS Abraham Lincoln

The situation on the USS Abraham Lincoln is the most visible example—a massive aircraft carrier with 5,000 crew. But this is theater-wide, not a carrier problem.

Iranian attacks damaged U.S. Gulf logistics nodes, most importantly Navy facilities in Bahrain. Bahrain had been the regional hub for food, spare parts, personnel, mail, and supplies. The Navy has shifted much support to Diego Garcia—roughly 2,200 miles from the Gulf of Oman.

This creates cascading problems. A warship doesn't simply "get supplies from America." Fuel, ammunition, food, parts, and consumables move through ports, warehouses, airfields, and replenishment ships. If nearby hubs are damaged, supply ships must travel farther to load and return. That means fewer replenishment cycles, longer delays, more fuel consumed moving supplies, and greater strain on finite logistics ships. Damage to other Gulf facilities compounds this.

Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz remains dangerous; commercial traffic has fallen sharply—hence high gas prices at home. Moving matériel through what should be one of the world's busiest maritime corridors grows harder.

So the problem can be summarized:

The U.S. still has enormously capable warships in the region, but Iran has attacked the infrastructure sustaining them. The farther the Navy must reach for supplies, the fewer it can deliver. The Lincoln's shortages are one symptom of a larger problem affecting destroyers, support ships, and other forces throughout the theater.

Of course, none of this would be an issue had not Trump decided to attack Iran, which has neither resolved the nuclear issue nor brought about more reasonable leadership in that country.  

WWII Logistics: The Ice Cream Barge

Combat power isn't merely ships and aircraft—it's the ability to keep feeding, fueling, arming, repairing, and crewing them indefinitely. Iran has attacked precisely that connective tissue.

Roosevelt's Navy understood logistics included morale. In the Pacific, sailors spent weeks in oppressive heat, thousands of miles from home, doing exhausting, dangerous work. Something as mundane as cold ice cream carried disproportionate psychological value.

The Navy installed ice-cream-making equipment aboard larger ships. In 1945 it commissioned a refrigerated concrete barge—popularly the "ice cream barge"—capable of producing substantial quantities for distribution to smaller ships and shore installations.

A correction to the mythology: accounts sometimes suggest an armada of dedicated ice-cream ships. The famous vessel was essentially a refrigerated storage/production barge, part of a much larger mobile logistics system. But yes, the United States devoted shipping capacity, machinery, refrigeration, and scarce ingredients to getting ice cream to Pacific sailors. This tidbit of information is one of many reasons why I’m infuriated by armchair warriors on social media complaining that today’s military is going "soft."

The Americans gradually created what amounted to a movable industrial civilization at sea. Fleet oilers brought fuel. Ammunition ships brought shells and bombs. Repair ships and floating dry docks performed substantial repairs without sending vessels back to Pearl Harbor or the mainland. Hospital ships provided medical care. Refrigerated ships brought fresh food. Tenders supported submarines and destroyers. Replacement aircraft, engines, crews, and spare parts flowed westward continuously.

By 1944–45, the Fast Carrier Task Force could remain at sea extraordinarily long periods because logistics vessels came to it, rather than forcing the combat fleet to return to port.

This was an enormous asymmetry between the United States and Japan. Japan built superb ships and aircraft, produced extraordinarily capable sailors and aviators. What it increasingly could not do was maintain the logistical machine required for sustained operations thousands of miles from home.

The United States could.

And it could do it on an almost absurd scale: Here are your bombs. Here are your 16-inch shells. Here's several million gallons of fuel. Here are replacement aircraft and engines. Here's mail from home.

Oh—and we brought ice cream.

That's not frivolous logistics. That's mastery of logistics.

The Right Person

But on a higher level, it goes back to FDR’s ability to put the right person in the right job.  It wasn’t limited to his beloved Navy. 

Consider the first White House conference that a little-known Colonel named George Marshall attended in November, 1938. 

Roosevelt was advocating an enormous aircraft-production program. The other senior officials were generally agreeable. Roosevelt eventually turned to the relatively junior Marshall and asked, “Don’t you think so, George?”

Marshall replied: “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I don’t agree with you at all” and provided a cogent explanation as to why FDR’s idea was not practical.

The room went cold. Marshall later recalled that other participants essentially said goodbye afterward, assuming he had wrecked his Washington career. He hadn't.

A few months later, Roosevelt selected Marshall as Army Chief of Staff, passing over dozens of more senior officers. When Roosevelt told him, Marshall warned: "I have the habit of saying exactly what I think, and that can be unpleasing. Is that all right?"

Roosevelt said yes. Marshall pressed him—essentially saying, You say that now, but I really am going to tell you things you don't want to hear. Roosevelt replied, “I know.”

That's a revealing bit of both sides of leadership. Marshall understood his responsibility wasn't telling the commander in chief what he wanted to hear. Roosevelt understood that an adviser who occasionally irritated him was considerably more valuable than one who reliably agreed.

As for Roosevelt's aircraft production idea: FDR was correct, but premature. After Pearl Harbor, he revived it in his 1942 State of the Union address, calling for quotas so high most thought them unreachable. (After a rough start, the goals were exceeded.) Air power, which Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt had dismissed during World War I, was now crucial to victory—Roosevelt understood that aviation advances had radically changed the situation.

Not that FDR always picked right. His 1938 appointment of Joseph P. Kennedy as Ambassador to the United Kingdom stands as one of history's worst presidential appointments—until Donald Trump took office and appointed the likes of "Whiskey" Pete. 

Virtual Civic Duty in the Age of Social Media

Social media is a conundrum of the early-21^st century, just as AI is becoming the conundrum for the mid-21^st century.

Some use social media to reveal themselves; others use it to conceal themselves.

When it comes to social media, I miss good old Myspace.  It seemed so benevolent and harmless.  Facebook effectively reduced Myspace to virtual irrelevance and devolved from a way to share vacation photos and recipes to arguing about everything from politics to conspiracies to the plotlines of various Star Trek incarnations.  The second leg of the Meta tripod, Instagram, is more photo oriented and increasingly littered with thirst-traps.  That platform has been subject to substantial and well-documented issues with child exploitation.  Then there is Meta’s newest leg, Threads.  Threads was supposed to be Instagram, but with text – but its engagement algorithms often seem to reward outrage.  Unless one manages one’s feed very carefully, Meta is a cesspool of clickbait, misinformation, and general toxicity.

Moderation on Meta is almost nil, and the little that exists is often faulty.  I once posted a Facebook livesteam of myself playing piano works by Eric Satie and was dinged for copyright against another person’s recording – even though the performances were radically different and my upright piano was noticeably out of tune.

In 2011, a different kind of social app emerged in the United States, Nextdoor.  Unlike Facebook, Nextdoor is geographically based.  Accounts are grouped into neighborhoods, which gives account holders a focused way to follow localized alerts (like missing pets), ask for references on things like home repair, or raise concerns about various issues.  In some cases, Nextdoor has been quite helpful.  I found my landscaper via Nextdoor.  We adopted our dog Brownie from a Nextdoor member who needed to rehome him. 

The moderation works differently as well.  Active, guideline abiding members are invited to become part of the review team, who can vote to Keep, Maybe remove, or Remove posts/comments that have been reported as violating Nextdoor guidelines.  In due time I was invited to join the review team.  I’ve never met or even exchanged messages with any of my fellow review team members (although I’ve received a few angry messages from people who didn’t like how I voted).

There are several reasons a post or comment may be reported.  The reporting may be done automatically, triggered by certain words or phrases – indeed, there are words and phrases so egregious offensive the post/comment will be automatically rejected.  But most reporting is done by individual account holders.  My impression is that a relatively small group of members submit the majority of reports.  Among those are members who selectively cherry pick political comments that disagree with their own – citing them as “national politics or religion,” which are not supposed to be discussed outside of dedicated groups.  There is even a member with multiple “sockpuppets” who zealously reports everything he sees as the slightest infraction.  Here is the conundrum: What if the post is from a news source, such as Cleveland.com or a local news channel, and concerns a national or international issue?  These posts are sponsored and taking them down is next to impossible.  Why would we censor comments about a national/international story when the story itself invites comments about that story?  This is an example where the guidelines are open to interpretation.

Interpretation also comes into play when it comes to posts or comments reported as Spam or possible fraud.  There is a particular member, a slight acquaintance of mine, who over-posts – whining about every aspect of modern life she seems ill-equipped to deal with.  This may be annoying, but it does not meet Next Door’s definition of Spam, so I generally vote to keep her posts and comments.

Selfies are not spam.  Thirst traps are against guidelines and I vote to remove them.  Someone who is verifiably local and offering a legitimate service does not constitute spam.  But an account which repeatedly drops the same information with a non-local phone number for a panoply of services, from plumbing to electric, is likely a referral service from out of state - and that’s spam.

Then there are those account holders who live to air their prejudices.  These rear their heads most often when a controversial issue makes the news.  Their posts are often promptly removed via automation – meaning the review team doesn’t even vote on them.  As often as not, the account holder reposts the same content complaining about the “liberal crybabies” who removed the offending post.

This all begs the question: “Hank, why do you perform a job for which you aren’t paid and almost never thanked?”  The only answers I can find for that point to two ingrained aspects of my character: my Advocate personality and my deep ties to the local community – I’ve lived in this area for 47 of my 59 years.  Either that or I’m a glutton for punishment.

Haydn, Rota, and Saint-Saëns with Yamada and Wendel at Severance

The weather and air quality cooperated as The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2026 Summers at Severance concert series continued last night.  The smoke from the Canadian wildfires – which two weeks ago caused pre-concert festivities to be moved indoors – had cleared – and with the temperatures agreeable, patrons gathered on Severance Hall’s front portico for drinks and snacks.

Last night’s program featured music from the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th centuries led by guest conductor Kazuki Yamada, assisted by Principal Trombonist Brian Wendel – appointed to that post in 2022.  I don’t usually comment on a performer’s attire, but instead of the customary black, Yamada wore navy-blue tails and trousers. 

The concert opened with Franz Josef Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 in D major, often called “The London Symphony” and the composer’s last work in the genre.  Yamada took the introduction at a slightly more spacious tempo than is customary before launching into a boldly articulated opening movement.  The following Andante was a portrait of restrained, elegant poetry.  The Menuet’s trio was especially memorable, with rests ever so slightly prolonged in a manner that would surely have delighted Haydn himself.  The finale beautifully balanced the rustic character of its principal theme, based on a Croatian ballad, with elegance and refinement.  One can only imagine what Haydn, who was impressed with the quality of London’s orchestras, would have thought of The Cleveland Orchestra’s flawless yet warm performance.   

Following a very quick stage adjustment, Yamada returned with Wendel for Nino Rota’s Trombone Concerto in C, composed in 1966 – less than a decade before Rota’s best known tune – the theme from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather – became an international earworm.  This is Wendel’s first concerto appearance here, but he showed no sign of nervousness whatsoever.  Rota’s concerto opens with an angular first movement, which sounds distinctly mid-20^th century while remaining firmly tonal and immediately accessible.  The soloist played with impeccable intonation with nary a blemish to be heard.  The second movement which begins in a somber, almost desolate manner before becoming increasingly agitated, featured sensitive phrasing and a liquid tone that belied the trombone’s identity as a brass instrument.  The witty rondo, with its rapid-fire changes of intonation, from repeated notes to staccato to long legato lines – all while the orchestra motors along – brought down the house.  Wendel was brought out for three curtain calls.     

 

Wendel following the concerto.

Following intermission Yamada returned to conduct a repertoire spectacular, Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, the so-called "Organ Symphony.”  Yet in this case, the work was treated more as a symphonic structure than an excuse for excess volume.  Yamada, whose conducting technique is outwardly economical, revealed the work’s contrapuntal detail – particularly in the mini-fugue episode of the work’s final movement.  Instrumental lines often submerged in recordings emerged with striking clarity, while the organ, brass, and percussion remained integrated into the orchestral fabric instead of overwhelming it.  Yet, the work was no less spectacular.

The only blemish of the night came not from the orchestra, but from the row behind me.  Someone’s mobile phone rang during the second movement of the Saint-Saëns, providing an unwelcome obbligato.  Worse, it was one of those loud rings made to sound like an old-school landline.  Worst of all, the patron seemed to be uncertain of how to turn the phone off.  I suddenly remembered that I didn’t hear the usual recorded announcement asking patrons to silence their electronic devices before the concert.  The announcement should be reinstated at the concert’s opening and repeated at the end of intermission.

Smetana, Rachmaninoff, and Dvořák with Bychkov and Ohlsson

The Summers at Severance 2026 season commenced with the welcome return of guest conductor Semyon Bychkov and pianist Garrick Ohlsson in a program of Smetana, Rachmaninoff, and Dvořák.  Owing to smoke from the Canadian wildfires, the customary pre-concert drinks and snacks with light music were moved indoors to the safety and comfort of one of America’s first air-conditioned halls.  As is common for summer concerts, the program was focused on easily digestible standard repertoire. 

Bychkov opened the program with The Moldau from Smetana’s Má vlast.  The performance highlighted the orchestra’s beautiful, burnished tone – far suaver than that caught on most recordings.  But some parts seemed overly smooth as the conductor deemphasized dynamic contrasts like the subito pianos during the wedding dance sequence.  Still, this was a performance of rare technical polish.

Following a quick stage change, Ohlsson, no stranger to Cleveland, joined conductor and orchestra for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1.  It would be tempting to call Rachmaninoff’s work one of the most arresting first opuses in history, but in truth it bears little resemblance to what the composer played when the work’s opening movement was premiered in 1892.  Instead, it was heavily patterned after Grieg’s Piano Concerto.  Rachmaninoff’s 1917 changes to the work – too drastic to be considered a revision, more of a rewrite, resulted in a more concise, dramatic piece.  Ohlsson, who I’ve twice heard conquer Busoni’s massive, 70+ minute long Piano Concerto, definitely has the chops to play this piece.  But what really impressed with his performance were the musicality and sense of structure – something too often lost by soloists who pursue gushing melodies or pianistic pyrotechnics.  Bychkov and the orchestra furnished an accompaniment which was rich without descending in Hollywood-esque schmaltz.  The audience began applauding before the last chord finished echoing off the hall’s back wall.

During the first curtain call, someone in the first row gave Ohlsson a large bouquet of flowers and he continued to carry them with him, including when he returned to the piano to play an encore.  The pianist humorously introduced it by saying “There’s no need to announce this piece because everyone will know it,” before beginning a poetic rendition of Debussy’s Clair de lune, featuring plasticity of phrasing and lovely pianissimos.

 

Ohlsson before the bouquet was handed to him.

Following intermission Bychkov returned to lead the evening’s concluding work, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88.  This is probably the composer’s most joyous symphony.  Though I was able to perceive the work’s overall character, a nagging headache prevented me from concentrating enough on the performance itself to impart its details.  

Beethoven’s Fidelio at Severance

Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra are wrapping up the 2025-2026 Season this month, and this weekend featured the orchestra’s annual opera production: Beethoven’s only work in the genre, Fidelio.

Let’s put the obvious up front, as an opera, Fidelio has strengths and glaring weaknesses.  It went through two failed productions in 1805 and 1806 before it was heavily revised and successfully mounted in 1814.  Beethoven was never a great writer for the voice, and this opera puts that limitation front and center. The libretto, which was based on two previous operas, centers around a woman who disguises herself as a man to get a job as a prison guard and free her husband from captivity.  Beethoven’s pacing is uneven and things don’t really get moving until the second act.  Yet what matters most is not the details of the plot, but the thematic context: the durability of love and freedom from oppression.

This was my first time seeing Fidelio.  Though it was presented without staging, several things came through that aren’t that apparent on recordings: the humor when Marzelline snarkily resists Jaquino’s advances in the first act; or the absurdity when Rocco notes of Leonore/Fidelio “this woman was about to become my son-in-law!”

As usual, the orchestra played spotlessly and with superb balance, so the singers were never overpowered.  Welser-Möst’s pacing was masterful.  Tony F. Sias presented the narrative sections in English which helped clarify the plot.  The singers were consistently on a high level; but special mention must be made of David Butt Philip’s performance as Florestan, whose opening “GOTT!” was simply astonishing.

In today’s era, particularly in the United States, when LGBTQ people find their rights being threatened, and when trans and non-binary people are subject to increasing hostility, the Cleveland Orchestra’s production of Fidelio can be legitimately seen as having more than musical context.  The past few years have demonstrated that this valued and venerable Cleveland institution is unafraid to make statements that go beyond pure music. 

Prokofiev, Neuwirth, and Wagner with Welser-Möst and Widmann

With the Cleveland Orchestra’s 2025-2026 season approaching its close, music director Franz Welser-Möst returned to the podium to lead a program that seemed tailor made for the ensemble: a popular early-20^th Century Symphony, the US premiere of a new work, capped off by roof-shaking opera excepts from the 19^th Century.

The concert opened in with a perfectly proportioned rendition of Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 in C major, the so-called “Classical” symphony.  Welser-Möst adopted a slightly more relaxed tempo than usual for the opening movement, almost an Allegro moderato instead of Allegro. This contrasted nicely with a somewhat brisker than usual second movement, before moving onto a Gavotte which featured some beautifully timed rubati when the winds entered with the main theme.  The Finale, which featured the repeat, was especially buoyant.

Clarinet soloist Jörg Widmann (a composer himself) joined Welser-Möst and the orchestra for Zones of Blue, a new work by Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth.  This is one of those works which takes the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to orchestration.  I won’t waste your time or my mental energy going over the details of a work which was a curious mix of half-hearted riffs from Gershwin (including the opening salvo of Rhapsody in Blue) and Miles Davis, mixed with orchestral noise. I have never particularly cared for the sound of the clarinet, and this work only served to aggravate my tinnitus.

The second half of the concert was devoted to a well-selected grouping of from Götterdämmerung, the final opera in Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung tetralogy.  Welser-Möst’s approach to Wagner somewhat reminds me of Karl Böhm’s.  He keeps the tempos moving yet flexible, without allowing the orchestra to sound overly bombastic – as doing so in an actual operatic performance would overwhelm the singers.  This made for an effective, cohesive presentation of what are usually derisively referred to as “bleeding chunks” from Wagner’s epic.

A relic from an earlier era at Severance

The previous day, Daniel and I attended a performance The Outsiders musical at Connor Palace theatre in Playhouse Square.  The performers should be lauded, but the musical numbers themselves were weak.  The whole did not pack the emotional punch of the 1983 film.  

Britten’s War Requiem at Severance

The team that determines the programming for The Cleveland Orchestra deserves high praise for numerous reasons: First, they consistently craft programs that mix the old and the new, the familiar with the unfamiliar; second, many of the programs have a thematic strand tying the various works together; third, the selected works are often relevant beyond the musical sphere.  This is especially the case with this weekend’s concerts, which were devoted to a single work by Benjamin Britten, a pacifist: his War Requiem.  Even more interesting is that this program was decided over a year ago, long before the Trump administration launched its actions in Venezuela, the Caribbean, the Eastern Pacific, and most recently Iran.

Klaus Mäkelä, substituting for Daniel Harding, conducted the orchestra in a performance which also featured soprano Tamara Wilson, tenor Andrew Staples, baritone Ludwig Mittelhammer, The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and The Cleveland Orchestra Children's Chorus.  I am unaware if Mäkelä has led this work before, but he conducted with surety and without micromanaging.  Pacing was ideal.  He knew when to hold the orchestra in check and when to loosen the reins.  The various sections of the orchestra, along with the vocal soloists and chorus, were well balanced.  The Children’s Chorus, placed off stage, produced an ethereal sonority.  The clear acoustics of Severance Hall made the diction in both Latin and English understandable – at least from my listening point midway back on the main floor.  Mäkelä and the orchestra remained frozen for a full minute after the work concluded and the audience remained silent – perhaps a moment of silence for those killed throughout mankind’s blood-stained history.

 

During this performance however, I found my thoughts turning not to the dead soldiers of the First or Second World Wars.  Instead, I thought of the many innocent civilians being killed in these and other conflicts.  Perhaps selfishly, my heart also turned to someone very important to me, who is currently serving in the United States military – a sensitive, intelligent young person who happens to like Classical music and has attended Cleveland Orchestra performances.  Fortunately, he’s nowhere near Iran – but that could change and he would be powerless to stop it.        

Shostakovich and Schubert at Severance

Guest conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, less than a year after a summer appearance here, returned to Severance Hall this weekend to lead the Cleveland Orchestra in contrasting works by Shostakovich and Schubert. 

Rouvali was joined by cellist Sol Gabetta for the concert’s opening work, Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2, Op. 126.  Although I know the composers more popular First Cello Concerto well, I was unfamiliar with this work until tonight’s concert.  Fortunately, I was joined by a cellist friend of mine who filled me in on the work’s structure and technical details.  One hears in the concerto’s opening movement the extreme turmoil that burdened Shostakovich as he had to balance his own desire for artistic expression with the practical necessity of avoiding running afoul of the Soviet music bureaucracy. The work has numerous arresting touches, including some inventive orchestration and a parody of a popular Russian song from the 1920s (Kupite bubliki/Buy bagels).  Gabetta conveyed every mood, including the sense of conflict between the soloist and orchestra – doubtless a reflection of the composer’s own conflicts.  Her performance was rapturously received, and she performed a fascinating encore which was a musical dialogue between herself and the orchestra’s percussionist, Mark Damoulakis. 

 

Following intermission Rouvali returned to lead a work that could hardly be more different from the Shostakovich: Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944.  This is one of my five favorite symphonies and one of the first I heard in its entirely thanks to a cassette tape my father gave to me when I was about thirteen (the Cleveland/Szell recording on Columbia).  Rouvali’s performance was close to ideal, with a conception that was thought out but not micromanaged, with tempi that were never dragged, with playing that was polished but not prissy, and the whole stripped of the phony Gemütlichkeit which has marred too many performances of this work.  Thankfully, Rouvali skipped the optional repeats except for the trio of the third movement.  The melodies floated over the accompaniment in a way that was, well, Schubertian.  The finale positively swung.  One could take issue with the exaggerated ritard the conductor introduced in the coda of the first movement (somewhat traditional in some circles but unspecified in the score) but this was a minor quibble.  This was a life-affirming “Great” C major, not proto-Mahler.

Fauré, Poulenc, Casella, and Debussy at Severance

Guest conductor Daniele Rustioni led this weekend’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts in a program of mostly French music.

The concert began with Gabriel Fauré’s Suite from Pelléas et Mélisande.  The opening Prélude unfolded with pastoral serenity, while the following Entr’acte benefitted from feather-light playing by the orchestra’s strings.  The most well-known movement, Sicilienne - used for years as the opening to our local Classical station’s late-night program – featured a gorgeous flute solo.

The next work was one of my favorite non-piano concertos, Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Timpani, featuring soloist Paul Jacobs, a regular visitor here.  This performance was more than the evening’s highlight, it was simply the finest performance of this work I’ve ever heard – either in concert or on recordings.  Jacobs and Rustioni gave this concerto, which too often sounds sectionalized, a dramatic through-line which clarified the work’s structure without sacrificing the piece’s elan.  It was a performance which balanced the conflicting sides of Poulenc’s personality: his religious rectitude and his secular sensuality.  To say the performance was well received is an understatement.  In response to the sustained ovation, Jacobs made his way back to the organ, sat down, turned to face the audience, and asked “Do you like Bach?”  Some affirming applause led to an encore by J. S. Bach, but I couldn’t name the specific work.

I wish I could say the rest of the concert was on the same level but, alas, that was not the case.  Following intermission Rustioni returned to lead the orchestra in Italia by Alfredo Casella.  The work, from 1909, is a skillfully orchestrated patriotic pastiche of popular Italian tunes, including “Funiculi, Funiculà.”  On the ride home, Daniel commented that the opening sounded like film music to him, and I’d had the exact same thought – specifically the more bombastic work of Max Steiner.  The conductor and orchestra clearly enjoyed delivering this rarely heard piece, and the audience enjoyed hearing it.  I didn’t mind hearing it either – once.

The final work on the program was Debussy’s La Mer.  Well played as it was, this performance was missing what the Poulenc concerto had in abundance – a unified conception.  Instead, it was a series of episodes and garish colors.  Rustioni’s micromanaging of parts of the score (which the orchestra plays with some regularity and could probably perform in their sleep) was as unnecessary as the vocalizing he was heard offering several times tonight.  I generally don’t get caught up in conductor’s platform manners, but it was appropriate that his concert took place on Easter weekend, because Rustioni hopped around on the platform like a bunny rabbit.

Kidane, Bartók, Scriabin, and screaming at Severance

Elim Chan continued her two-week guest stint with The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall with an engaging program of music from the 20^th and 21^st Centuries.

The concert began with Daniel Kldane’s Sun Poem, composed in 2022 and receiving its first Cleveland performances this weekend.  The work is symmetrically constructed, starting with muted trumpets, gradually joined by other instruments.  Parts of the work reminded me of the minimalism of John Adams, and it  seemed more focused on layering textures than thematic development.  The work ended quietly, much as it began.

Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja then strode onstage in bare feet, wearing a red outfit for Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1 – composed in 1908 for a lover, but unpublished during his lifetime and unperformed until 1958, 14 years after the composer’s death.  I was unfamiliar with this concerto and surprised by the work’s blending of aching romanticism with modernity.  On a technical level, Kopatchinskaja played the work well.  She also put on a choreographic show that made Glenn Gould seem like a portrait of restrained normalcy.  I understand that certain mannerisms among performers can be unavoidable.  But this was pure circus act and drew attention to herself rather than the music.  Some in the audience responded positively to it, including a wannabe orator behind me whose eruptions reminded me of similar screaming I endured at a Ricky Martin concert in Las Vegas in 2017.  I wonder if he was a deranged groupie.  Kopatchinskaja played what she described as a “contemporary” work as an encore, which was a mix of catlike scratching on the instrument accompanied by grimaces and vocalizations from her.     

A sense of normalcy returned after intermission when Chan returned to lead Bartók’s  Dance Suite.  Fron 1923, this is a work of Bartók’s mature style: Modern yet not atonal.  Chan maintained perfect control over the rhythm, yet for all the propulsiveness in the work’s faster movements, the orchestra’s tone never became harsh, and the sections were all in balance.  This was about as suave as I’ve ever heard Bartók performed.

The final work was Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, a work of mystical eroticism which provided an appropriate climax for the evening.  Chan’s interpretation was guts and glory, with no holding back – yet just when it seemed the potential of the orchestra was exhausted, they kept piling on more.  The last few minutes were a sustained musical orgasm.

 

 

Stravinsky, Haydn, and Beethoven at Severance

Guest conductor Elim Chan returned to Cleveland to lead a varied program that ranged from the classical age, to the cusp of the romantic era, to the realm of neoclassicism.  As with her previous appearance here, Chan demonstrated she’s one of her generation’s most compelling conductors.

The concert opened with the 1949 version of the Suite from Pulcinella, Stravinsky’s clever reimagining of works not by just Pergolesi, as Stravinsky thought, but Gallo, Wassenaer, and Monza as well.  This ballet score has been overshadowed by the composer’s more revolutionary works in that genre like the Firebird and the Rite of Spring, but in recent years it has grown on me.  Chan led the reduced ensemble and perfectly captured the score’s blend of the antique and the modern, with wit and whimsy.  The audience was engaged and responded with some chuckles following the bumptious march and warm applause afterward.  During the ovation, Chan walked over to acknowledge each player, rather than pointing to them from the podium.

The orchestra’s principle trumpet Michael Sachs, sporting a newly grown beard, strode onstage for the concert’s next work, Franz Josef Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major.  The work was composed for the newly invented keyed trumpet, but recordings on such instruments demonstrate that when it comes to this work, the period instrument movement is sadly misguided.  Sachs delivered a spotless, effortless sounding  performance, especially notable to the liquid tone he produced in the work’s central Andante.  My father, who died nearly ten years ago, played trumpet from high school onward, and this was one of those concerts I wish I could have brought him to.

 

Following intermission Chan returned to lead the orchestra in possibly the most famous classical composition of all time: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67. This is a work which has become so well known that it’s almost impossible to listen to with fresh ears.  But Chan’s lean approach, which eschewed bombast and favored balance over volume, was most welcome.  She conducted with the score and followed the markings (including the correct placement of the ritardandi early in the third movement) rather than applying “traditional” rhetorical flourishes.  Tempi were on the brisk side, and the last movement repeat was observed.  It was a resounding conclusion to a successful night. 

If Chan isn’t on the short list to succeed music director Franz Welser-Möst, she should be added to it immediately.

Throughout the concert, I was reminded once again of what a rare treasure our orchestra is.  Whatever the issues of living in northeast Ohio, from the state’s corrupt, gerrymandered politics to the regions capricious weather, when one considers the cost of living balanced against three major sports franchises, cultural amenities including the nation’s second largest theater district, world-class museums, and of course The Cleveland Orchestra, why would a person of culture want to live anywhere else?  

The Slow, Sad Death of Sony Classical

During the 20^th Century, there were two great American Classical Music record labels, Columbia and RCA.  Columbia had sub-labels like Epic and Odyssey, and RCA had Gold Seal.  Columbia’s artist roster included conductors Bruno Walter, George Szell, and Eugene Ormandy – to name but three, along with pianist Rudolf Serkin and, for an eleven-year period, Vladimir Horowitz.  RCA had Arturo Toscanini, Fritz Reiner, Charles Munch, Ormandy after 1968, violinist Jascha Heifetz and pianists Artur Rubinstein and Van Cliburn – along with Horowitz for most of his career. 

Columbia and RCA fought for supremacy in the American classical market.  They also marketed to Europe, but the United States was their priority - and they endured through competition with European labels including Decca/London, Deutsche Grammophon, and Philips, along with American upstarts like Mercury records.

As older generations of performing artists died, new ones rose to prominence – for example, Leonard Bernstein, who was a Columbia artist until defecting to DG.  Horowitz’s pupils Byron Janis and Gary Graffman were RCA performers until the label dumped them in favor of Cliburn, who had just won the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition.  Janis went to Mercury records, while Graffman went to Columbia – and subsequently helped persuade Horowitz to join him there after the elder artist became disenchanted with RCA’s approach to recording and marketing. 

It was during this period, the 1950s and 1960s, that both RCA and Columbia were recording large swaths of the Classical repertoire in stereo, with their labels boasting of “Living Stereo” and “360-degree sound.” 

The 1970’s saw a precipitous drop in Classical record sales.  The issue was mainly that the core repertoire had been recorded umpteen times and listeners saw little reason to buy, for example, Rubinstein’s 1971 recording of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy when they had a perfectly fine version with Rubinstein and the Chicago Symphony under Fritz Reiner from 1956 – in “Living Stereo” to boot.  If memory serves, the 1956 recording sold some 250,000 copies, whereas the 1971 remake sold a mere 13,000.  “Advancements” from both RCA and Columbia including Dynagroove, Quadrophonic sound, and gimmicked microphone placement resulted in some atrocious sounding records – particularly from RCA.

But there were two changes which briefly revived sales industry-wide: the advents of digital recording and the Compact Disc.  Suddenly, the core repertoire was being recorded again with unrestricted dynamics and without tape hiss.  Telarc Records, the Mercury records of the 1980s-1990s, recorded a good deal of that repertoire with the Cleveland Orchestra.  RCA’s big names, Rubinstein, Ormandy, Horowitz, had either died, retired, or defected to other labels.  Columbia’s biggest name at the time, Leonard Bernstein, switched allegiances to Deutsche Grammophon, as did Rudolf Serkin.  Glenn Gould was dead.  For new recordings RCA and Columbia largely had to rely on solid performers who, with the exception of Yo-Yo Ma, never really caught fire with the public like the old-timers had: Emanuel Ax, Murray Perahia, Paavo Berglund.

In 1989 Sony Classical bought Columbia Masterworks and, as their first coup, signed Vladimir Horowitz for what turned out to be his last recording – and what a fine recording it is both in terms of recorded sound and performance.  By then, RCA – once such a corporate giant that it owned the NBC radio and television networks – was part of the Bertelsmann Music Group and was struggling.  Much of their business was driven by reissues of varying quality from their back catalogue.  As someone who worked at a Classical record store (the Music Box at Cleveland’s Shaker Square) in the 1980s, I saw early on how the back catalog continued to have market potential.  One day in 1985, we received four copies of Artur Rubinstein playing Tchaikovsky’s and Grieg’s Piano concertos on CD – recordings which originated in the 1960s.  My manager scoffed and said “these will never sell – CD collectors only want pure Digital recordings, not this analog crap.”  In fact, all four copies sold within a few days while newer digital recordings of the same repertoire languished.    

During the 1990s, both RCA’s and Sony’s releases included a combination of new material and reissues.  RCA’s included Toscanini’s complete authorized recordings (which included a cabinet for those who purchased the complete edition), a 22-CD set of Horowitz’s RCA recordings, and, in 1999, a 107-CD deluxe edition of Rubinstein’s complete RCA recordings – which reportedly broke the bank and sold poorly until the CDs were issued individually.  During much of this period Sony was headed by Horowitz’s old manager, Peter Gelb.  Under his directions, Sony’s new releases, controversially, included non-Classical “crossover” material with artists including Yo-Yo Ma recording an album of Americana; electronic composer Vangelis recorded an album; and James Horner’s score to the film Titanic which – whether or not one agreed with including film scores under a Classical label – sold like gangbusters and made a lot of money for the label.  During this era Sony’s reissues included a well-engineered reissue of Horowitz’s complete Columbia recordings and a lavish box of composer Igor Stravinsky’s recordings.   

It was also during the Gelb era that RCA found itself in a position to be acquired and, fortuitously, it was Sony which took RCA over.  Suddenly, America’s two largest classical labels were one enormous label.

With access to both the RCA’s and Columbia’s deep back-catalogues, Sony produced some excellent boxed sets which have done their core artists proud: not just the big boys like Toscanini, Bruno Walter, Szell, Rubinstein, Heifetz, Horowitz, and Glenn Gould; but Pierre Boulez, Robert Casadesus, Cliburn, Graffman, Janis, William Kapell, Murray Perahia, Charles Rosen, both Rudolf Serkin and his son Peter, André Watts, and others too numerous to mention. 

A selection from some of Sony Classical's many 

Original Album boxed sets. 

(The Horowitz photo includes a few DG recordings.)

During this period, many claimed these issues were folly and that the era of the CD was over as the era of streaming approached.  But sales of both CDs and LPs increased during COVID, and most of the boxed sets mentioned above sold out almost immediately upon issuance – necessitating reprints and creating a lucrative resell market on eBay and other sites.

Then, last year, there was a bloodbath at Sony.  Those with knowledge of the of the label’s storied history and the ability to restore the historic recordings were given the ax.  No reason was given for this evisceration – and given the documented strong sales of these boxed sets, it’s difficult to believe they were losing the label money.  So, the reissues came to an end – and at the most inopportune moment.  Collectors were awaiting the final box of Sony’s multi-part Ormandy set comprising his post-1968 RCA recordings.  Pianophiles were also hoping that Sony would, finally, issue Horowitz’s complete privately recorded Carnegie Hall recitals from 1945-1950 – which have been floating around on the internet in poor sounding transfers.

Sony’s classical department has now been downsized so that what was once a Mississippi River of releases has slowed to a trickle.  The back-catalogue is now ignored and at this rate, Sony’s Classical division is seems poised to downsize itself out of business in the very near future.