Cleveland Plain Dealer
May 14, 2010

Cleveland Orchestra crafts vivid dreams with Golijov and Berlioz

By Zachary Lewis

The hopes of a certain local basketball team may be dashed, but dreams of a musical nature are very much alive and well this week at Severance Hall.

Disjointed on the surface but coherent beneath it, the Cleveland Orchestra's program -- featuring Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique" and a concerto for klezmer clarinet -- ends up coalescing rather tightly around a theme of apparitions, of musical protagonists having visions.

Certainly it's a dream-come-true of sorts for assistant conductor Tito Munoz, who capitalizes brilliantly on the chance to lead a subscription program and demonstrate once again he's ready to take on the orchestral world.

But the occasion may be even more significant for Franklin Cohen. Channeling a 13th-century Jewish mystic as the soloist in Osvaldo Golijov's "The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind," the orchestra's principal clarinetist establishes himself as a lead interpreter of a potent score destined for a long life.

To label Cohen a "clarinetist" doesn't do him justice. In fact, he switches nimbly between four clarinets, including bass, and with them achieves a mind-boggling array of effects -- rumbles, squeals, whispers, and screams -- evoking not only the uproarious language of klezmer but even the mellow sound of a tenor saxophone.

Long spans of driving minimalism alternate with serene, dirge-like interludes, reflecting the auras of both religious gestures and freestyle oration. Though it all, Cohen (who recently recorded "Isaac" in a version with string quartet) serves as a vibrant medium, communicating with utmost fervor and yielding repeatedly to the passion of the moment. Best are those passages, typically slow, in which the clarinet is woven deeply into the orchestral fabric.

Munoz deserves considerable credit as well. Simply keeping time in a piece like "Isaac" is no mean feat, and yet he does so crisply while also prodding the chamber-sized string orchestra to vivid rhythmic heights.

After the spiritual visions of Golijov comes "Symphonie fantastique," with its obsession on an earthly beloved. Wading into the risky realm of a large, well-known score, Munoz again emerges triumphant, turning in a reading of bold distinction.

Rigidity has no place in his performance. Instead, the "Reveries" are more like palpitations, breathless flurries, while the spacious "In the Country" movement, with its gentle rolls of timpani thunder and lovely antiphonal effects by oboist Frank Rosenwein and English hornist Robert Walters, sustains momentum without sacrificing delicacy or falling victim to dramatic excess.

If there's excess, it's only where it's called for, in the concluding "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath." Between the chilling echoes of bells and clarinetist Daniel McKelway's singular distortion of the idee fixe, it's a wild, viscerally-stirring scene.

Strauss's bubbly overture to "Die Fledermaus" opens the program on a purely lighthearted note. In the graceful rendering by Munoz and the orchestra, the most serious vision is of partygoers in costumes.

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