|
Cleveland Plain Dealer
July 21, 2008
Cleveland Orchestra
welcomes top-notch guests
by Donald Rosenberg
Plain Dealer Music Critic
Not one, but two significant Cleveland
Orchestra debuts made Blossom Music Center the place to be over the
weekend for the classically minded.
The concerts Saturday and Sunday provided
ample hope for the future of music: All of the guests, including
Lyndhurst-born pianist Orion Weiss, are in their 20s. Some members of
the Kent/Blossom Chamber Orchestra, which performed both under Cleveland
Orchestra assistant conductor Tito Munoz, 24, and with guest conductor
Andris Nelsons and the Cleveland Orchestra, are still in their teens.
The weekend's sensation was German
violinist Julia Fischer, who played the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto on
Saturday as if it were the newest piece on the block. Every phrase was
filled with poetry or verve, as the music demanded. Fischer traveled
seamlessly from intimacy to blazing fire, molding Tchaikovsky's romantic
lines on wings of refined ardor.
She is a violinist of impeccable taste, silvery timbre and flawless
intonation who has an instinctive way of elevating musical messages.
Although Nelsons wasn't the most alert collaborator, Fischer made sure
the concerto emerged as the lovefest between soloist and orchestra it
ideally is.
Weiss, who studied at the Cleveland
Institute of Music before attending New York's Juilliard School, was the
soloist Sunday in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1. His performance had
poise, crisp articulation and, in the glorious slow movement, dreamy
beauty.
The first-movement cadenza was a torrential
drama in Weiss' hands. Let's hear him play a recital of Beethoven
sonatas, or anything else, for that matter. His contact with the
orchestra and Nelsons was close Sunday. Franklin Cohen's clarinet solos,
as in many other pieces over the weekend, were eloquent.
The Latvian-born Nelsons, who becomes music
director of England's City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in
September, is a conductor to watch - literally. He lurches and jumps on
the podium. The choreography would be distracting if the results weren't
so absorbing.
Unlike many youngish conductors, Nelsons
appears to have no need to set speed records. His tempos are measured
and judicious. He's interested in drama and momentum, if not precision.
He began Saturday's concert with an intense
account of Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" (in the Rimsky-Korsakov
edition) and closed with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. The latter was
not just another rendition of a warhorse. Nelsons emphasized the score's
brooding and capricious character through expansive and songful phrasing
and vivid contrasts of dynamics.
The orchestra sounded mighty, delicate and
fervent, with warmly nuanced solos by Cohen and principal oboe Frank
Rosenwein, elfin strings in the scherzo and brass playing of focused
strength.
Nelsons' chief assignments Sunday were
works by Berlioz. The "Roman Carnival Overture" had plenty of charming
and robust appeal, and Robert Walters brought a noble glow to the
English horn solo.
"Symphonie fantastique" was the orchestra's
annual side-by-side partnership with the Kent/Blossom Chamber Orchestra.
Reinforced sonorities aside, Nelsons' reading reveled in ethereal and
macabre details. It was a gripping nightmare.
With Munoz as bold, incisive conductor, the
Kent/Blossom forces opened Sunday's concert with vibrant accounts of
music by Mozart, Stravinsky and Falla. Another rehearsal in the vast
Blossom expanse would have helped clarity and presence, but the high
level of playing suggested bright prospects for classical music.
Link to original article...
Return to 'Press'
|
