Cleveland Plain Dealer
August 14, 2006

Orchestra pays graceful respect to departed musicians

By Donald Rosenberg
Plain Dealer Music Critic

Music has the incomparable power to communicate where words and images cannot. The Cleveland Orchestra explored this mystery Sunday at Blossom Music Center, where it performed, alone and with three conductors, a program that was both double memorial and exhilarating experience.

It has been a painful month for the orchestra. Former principal oboe John Mack died July 23 at age 78 of complications from brain cancer. Friday afternoon, orchestra bassist Charles Barr, 31, died in a bicycle accident.

Their colleagues saluted them in dignified fashion Sunday. The orchestra’s strings opened the evening with a hushed account of the Air from Bach’s Suite No. 3, which they played without conductor, in memory of Barr.

At the start of the concert’s second half, the ensemble and Aspen Academy conductor Tito Muñoz dedicated their performance of Copland’s “Quiet City” to Mack. Muñoz deftly painted the score’s varied atmospheres, with principal trumpet Michael Sachs and English hornist Jeffrey Rathbun (subbing for the indisposed Robert Walters) as eloquent soloists.

The concert was the annual event featuring David Zinman, music director of the Aspen Festival and School, with gifted proteges from his American Academy of Conducting at Aspen. First up was Sean Newhouse, who studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music, to conduct John Harbison’s “Canonical American Songbook.”

As Harbison points out in a program note, the title is a pun referring to beloved songs employed in canon (or round). Each piece bears the American composer’s individual stamp of affection, pungency and sonic novelty, with the final “Anniversary Song” including a rendition of “Happy Birthday” played on reeds and mouthpieces (yes, minus the rest of the wind and brass instruments).

Newhouse shaped a genial, clear-textured reading that showed him — as Copland revealed Muñoz — to have done his homework well. At the end, Newhouse gave a solo bow to percussionist Joseph Adato, who joined the orchestra in 1962 and now heads into retirement.

Between his young conductors’ assignments, Zinman shared his own brand of artistic seasoning in two Mozart symphonies. He began with the Symphony No. 33, using a small ensemble and emphasizing the work’s airy, lilting qualities. The music’s lyrical grace emerged at every moment, even when Mozart sends the players on a brisk ride in the final movement.

Zinman expanded the orchestra’s string sections for Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony, which he treated as the regal gem it is in the right hands, lips and limbs. Refinement, energy and technical dazzlement in the fugal finale made this a performance of stylish truth and jubilant brilliance. How many other orchestras play Mozart with such unforced elegance? Beats me.

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