The Cleveland Orchestra confirmed up at Carnegie Corridor this week and not using a star. When the music director Franz Welser-Möst deliberate the ensemble’s two-night go to to New York, the opening live performance, on Tuesday, was to be headlined by the soprano Asmik Grigorian. A volcanic presence on European levels who hardly ever makes it to the USA, Grigorian would have been a significant box-office draw. Then got here information that she was pulling out for unspecified private causes.
Time to interrupt out the emergency rations of Beethoven.
The remaining rump of the Clevelanders’ program for Tuesday, the Suite from Janacek’s “From the Home of the Useless,” based mostly on Dostoyevsky’s account of life in a Russian jail colony, was joined by Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and, for good measure, his “Leonore” Overture No. 3.
A crowd-pleasing answer to a advertising and marketing headache? A repertory staple musicians can shine in with out an excessive amount of rehearsal? Under no circumstances. The brand new program was “an opportunity to say one thing vital about our world at this time,” Welser-Möst wrote in a program assertion that referred, neatly however vaguely, to individuals’s “combat for freedom in every single place.”
With out naming specifics, Welser-Möst defined that the Janacek was a testomony to “human dignity” in “desolate circumstances.” Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 traced a development “from darkness to mild,” he added, whereas the overture, written for Beethoven’s political jail break opera “Fidelio,” represented the “biggest music about freedom ever written.” Removed from being a cease hole, the brand new program created what Welser-Möst known as “a profound assertion” that was certain to “resonate deeply” with New Yorkers. (No related claims had been made for Wednesday’s program, which consisted of Stravinsky’s “Pétrouchka” and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.)
The ensuing live performance on Tuesday was invigorating and stuffed with ravishing enjoying, as was the efficiency the following night time. But when there was any profound fact to be gleaned from the double serving to of Beethoven served alongside Janacek’s dazzling suite, it was solely that the Fifth and the “Leonore” overture present ready-made templates for wrestle narratives ending in triumph. Simply whose wrestle and what’s being overcome — I’m guessing that Gaza, Ukraine and the state of American democracy are amongst them — stay open to interpretation.
In equity, the Cleveland Orchestra has by no means relied on provocative or politically minded programming to earn its devoted fan base and superlative-studded opinions. In his 23 years on the helm, Welser-Möst has fine-tuned this storied ensemble into a sublime, cohesive and keenly responsive engine. Different American orchestras have struggled to outline their position in society as they fret over accusations that their department of the humanities is reactionary and socially irrelevant. The Cleveland Orchestra’s picture could also be conservative — a guardian of a specific European custom — but it surely’s a well-defined luxurious model that delivers excellent worth.
Watching the musicians carry out on the identical stage that had simply hosted the Vienna Philharmonic, I used to be struck by the similarities between the 2 establishments. A few of it needed to do with the Cleveland Orchestra’s mellow and thoughtfully blended brass part, which stands other than the extra metallic and muscular enjoying in most American orchestras. The Cleveland string part bodily strikes very like its Austrian counterpart, with total blocks of gamers bobbing and weaving as in a chamber setting the place the entire torso helps sign expressive intent to the group. Particularly within the final motion of the Tchaikovsky, it was a pleasure watching the violinists sway and dance as a bloc.
And although the ensemble is studded with stars, a spirit of collaborative forbearance infuses solos. The visitor concertmaster Jan Mracek was nearly self-effacingly light-footed within the virtuosic cadenzas Janacek writes for the solo violin. John Clouser’s bassoon simmered with refinement, particularly within the Tchaikovsky. And my ear stored being drawn to the uncommonly dark-hued sound of Joshua Smith’s flute, which lent surprising gravitas to an instrument that sometimes gives mild birdlike aid each time it rises above the orchestral texture.
From the rostrum, Welser-Möst projected discreet authority, conducting with an financial system of gesture that highlighted the straightforward symbiosis between him and the orchestra. Within the Beethoven symphony, he was particularly attentive to transitional moments, together with the exponential crescendo that flares up on the finish of the third motion and leads into the explosive remaining Allegro.
Beethoven calls for utmost restraint from the orchestra within the bars main as much as that surge, because the music rises in pitch with out but gaining quantity. At Carnegie Corridor, that passage got here throughout as nearly claustrophobically repressive, the eventual uncorking of sound and power seeming to burst out like pent-up frustration. It was a type of musical thrills that may have made Beethoven’s Fifth such a secure wager with audiences of every kind. However to a politically inclined listener, it may additionally sound like a tipping level in a mass motion resulting in revolution.
