Music of Unsuk Chin and Richard Strauss at Severance

As befits the shortest month of the year, this evening’s Cleveland Orchestra program at Severance Hall, which featured guest conductor  Alain Altinoglu and cellist Alisa Weilerstein, was about the briefest I’ve ever encountered at a Classical music concert – just about an hour’s worth of music.  Whatever the program lacked in length was made up for in variety and substance. 

The program opened with Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto, composed in 2009, featuring Weilerstein in the solo part.  The work is scored for a large orchestra, supplemented with piano and celeste.  As with subito con forza, which was performed by the orchestra two years ago, Chin seems more interested in orchestration and sonic textures than with thematic development.  Totally atonal, the work shows the continuing influence of Chin’s teacher György Ligeti.  Weilerstein, a frequent and welcome guest in Cleveland, made the most of Chin’s unorthodox writing, which included rasping and scraping – as well as delivering some haunting lyricism in the third movement.  Weilerstein played a short Bach work in a major key as an encore.

The Richard Strauss works followed intermission.  Let’s put one matter front and center: The Cleveland Orchestra has been considered one of the world’s great orchestras for the music of Richard Strauss for nearly 70 years – going back to the George Szell era.  In fact, the first recordings I ever heard of the tone poems featured in this evening’s concert were with this orchestra led by Lorin Maazel – way back when I was a teenager.  The recording also featured Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration which, even then, struck me as the greatest of the three.

Altinoglu started with Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, based on the 16^th Century German folk hero.  As the story goes, Till Eulenspiegel, who may or may not have been a real person, was a prankster whose targets were often those in power, including clergy and academics.  Eventually, the authorities caught up with the naughty prankster and, as reflected in the music, he paid the ultimate price with a one-way trip to the gallows.  The 16^th Century was definitely a “tough on crime” era.  But the work’s coda, where the merry theme returns, assures the audience that his spirit lives on.  This is the kind of work which, if played “straight,” will die.  Altinoglu caught the work’s humor and shifted moods effortlessly, helped by pin-point turns by the orchestra.     

The character of Don Juan is more familiar: a rebellious Spanish libertine or, in modern psychobabble, a sex addict.  He also has a gambling problem and kills the father of one of his conquests.  Dude’s got issues.  As with Till Eulenspiegel, Don Juan dies for his sins – but in this case the death is self-inflicted.  Dark stuff indeed.  But the tone poem starts off with a brash major key fanfare, because pursuing and obtaining sex is fun – at least in moderation.  The fact that Don Juan is rebelling against an overly strict father is icing on the cake.  Just don’t fall in love or things will get complicated.  Again, Altinoglu’s conception was a model of phrasing, pacing, and clarity.  The Cleveland Orchestra proved once again that it retains its crown as a great orchestra for this kind of repertoire, and special mention must be made of Nathaniel Silberschlag’s horn solo which featured the most unearthly legato I’ve ever heard from that instrument. 

 

A reminder that Severance Hall's acoustics were 

once far less appealing than they are today.

 

 

Loggins-Hull, Barber, and Prokofiev at Severance

 

The lack of repertoire staples at this week’s Cleveland Orchestra concert, led by music director Franz Welser-Möst, did nothing to detract from the compelling performances or the audience’s enthusiasm.  

The opening piece was Can You See?, by Allison Loggins-Hull.  The short work is a contemplation on The Star-Spangled Banner - both the lyrics and the music, which was originally composed as To Anacreon in Heaven by British composer John Stafford Smith.  (I will interject that I don’t feel The Star-Spangled Banner is the best of all possible anthems for our nation, given that it commemorates a battle that was part of what was essentially a pissing-match with the nation that is today our closest ally, has lyrics that include “the hireling and the slave” and is needlessly militaristic.  America the Beautiful seems like a better symbol of our aspirations, but that’s just me.)  It begins with distant percussion which seems to recall the defense of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 which inspired Francis Scott Key’s poem.  From there the music is freely associated and the listener hears harmonies that recall Smith’s original, without directly quoting it.  The music was enthusiastically received, and the composer was invited to the stage to share in the ovation.  

Cellist Alisa Weilerstein then joined the orchestra for a captivating performance of Barber’s Cello Concerto.  The work’s opening movement contrasted a syncopated drive and searing lyricism, with thematic material that was challenging to present and to hear.  One can sense the composer flirting with the twelve-tone rows that he employed in his Piano Sonata, composed just a few years later.  Weilerstein’s phrasing of the contemplative central movement was something to behold.  The dancing third movement featured some stunning passagework in the cello’s treacherous upper register.  This is a work that should be presented more often (premiered in 1945, the Cleveland Orchestra didn’t perform it until 2013).  Weilerstein received a well-deserved standing ovation.

Prokofiev’s Fourth Symphony, which drew inspiration from his ballet score The Prodigal Son, premiered in 1930, then was extensively revised 20 years later, was equally riveting.  The revised version was performed this weekend.  For decades, Prokofiev was subjected to harsh sounding performances in an apparent attempt to drive home his music’s modernism.  Prokofiev, judging by his extant recordings, was not that kind of performer himself.  Welser-Möst and the orchestra, who have given compelling performances of Prokofiev’s Second, Third, and Fifth Symphonies (all recorded and available), delivered a convincing performance that proved that strongly rhythmic, even percussive music, need not be ugly.  The slow opening, almost as if a 20^th Century version of a Haydn symphony, is suddenly pushed aside for a series of rapid-fire string passages that propel the music headlong into conflict – only to be interrupted by a pastoral mood, then plunging forward again.  The second movement, with its clock-like episodes, again reminds the listener of Haydn, in this case the slow movement of his Symphony No. 101.  The third movement was classic Prokofiev, with motifs that sounded inspired by parts of his Romeo & Juliet ballet score.  The celebratory, slightly satirical finale, with its bouncing rhythm, led to a declamatory coda.  During the extended applause, percussionist Paul Yancich was brought forth for a separate bow and was cheered to the rafters.  As with the Barber Concerto, this work deserves to be heard more often. 

The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance – a return and a farewell

 

The Cleveland Orchestra returned to Severance this weekend for the first concerts of the 2021-2022 season – as well as its first concerts there since March of 2020.  

In a pre-concert talk with orchestra manager André Gremillet, conductor Franz Welser-Möst spoke of the season in general, including the emphasis on newer and lesser-known music, as well as upcoming concerts he’s especially anticipating, including a January concert with pianist Igor Levit.  Welser-Möst also delved into the importance of the audition process in shaping the orchestra, noting that musicians he appoints may well serve in the orchestra for decades to come. 

The orchestra warming up before the concert

The lesser-known music in last night’s program was Richard Strauss’s Tone Poem Macbeth, Op. 23, a work so rarely performed that The Cleveland Orchestra never played it before this weekend.  Composed in the late-1880s, it’s one of many compositions inspired by the works of Shakespeare – along with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo & Juliet Overture, Beethoven’s Overture to Coriolanus, Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a host of operas. Strauss’s work is probably the least developed, compositionally – not a slam on the composer, merely an acknowledgement that he was in 20s and still developing his style.  The work justifiably leans toward the dramatic and is skillfully orchestrated.  The clean ensemble playing and sonority – balanced even at fortissimo – were apt demonstrations that the orchestra was back where it belonged and still in stellar form.

Joan Tower’s 2021 composition, A New Day, premiered this past summer at the Colorado Music Festival, here received its first Cleveland performances.  The work, for cello and orchestra, is in some ways reminiscent of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony in that it’s not strictly programmatic but more an exploration of feelings awakened by specific events, in this case Daybreak, Working Out, Mostly Alone, and Into the Night.  The inventively orchestrated work cannily exploits both the orchestra and cello.  Soloist Alisa Weilerstein proved herself easily up to the job – at least she made it look easy, which is the sign of a virtuoso performer, and Welser-Möst’s accompaniment anticipated her every move.  The performance received a sustained ovation, which the composer was welcomed on stage to share.

The second half of the concert was dedicated to Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony.  This is a work familiar to Cleveland audiences, not least from the fine recordings made under the direction of George Szell and Lorin Maazel.  The orchestra last performed it at Blossom Music Center in 2018, a concert at which Daniel and I were joined by his niece and nephew.  Before the concert, Welser-Möst mentioned that his interpretation was a bit different than the standard, but I sensed little that was unusual here.  The main differences were a keener sense of orchestral balance in the second movement, Allegro marcato, than is usually heard – with some remarkably feathery playing from the first violins.  Also, the finale went at a very brisk tempo that left even Szell and Maazel in the dust, yet everything was kept in proportion and clarity was never sacrificed.  The finale was brought to a stunning climax which brought the audience to its feet.    

Joela Jones takes a final bow as principal keyboardist.

Last night’s concert also marked Joela Jones’ final appearance as the orchestra’s principal keyboardist – a position she has held since she was appointed by George Szell in 1968.  One Szell appointee, Assistant Principal Second Violinist Emilio Llinás, remains with the orchestra.