United States Summers at Severance 2024 [2]: Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst (conductor). Mandel Live performance Corridor at Severance Music Heart, Cleveland, 15.8.2024. (MSJ)
Mozart – Symphony No.35 in D main, Okay.385, ‘Haffner’
Bruckner – Symphony No.4 in E-flat main, ‘Romantic’ (1878/80 model, ed. Benjamin M. Korstvedt)
The ultimate ‘Summers at Severance’ live performance was an essential event. It marked the return of music director Franz Welser-Möst to the Cleveland Orchestra upfront of a European tour that can observe the ultimate live performance of the Blossom Music Competition on Saturday. It additionally marked the primary Cleveland efficiency of the brand new crucial version, edited by Benjamin Korstvedt, of the usual 1878/80 revision of Bruckner’s Symphony No.4. Above all, it stood as a signpost for what the conductor has inbuilt Cleveland.
Bruckner’s Fourth makes intensive and spectacular use of the brass part, and this live performance was a high-quality reminder of how the Cleveland Orchestra’s brass have grown through the years. I first began attending Cleveland concert events within the Eighties, when the brass part was much less highly effective than now. Then-music director Christoph von Dohnányi centered on hiring new gamers to strengthen the part, and Welser-Möst has continued that progress, to the purpose the place your entire part is magnificent. They’ll play with large weight and burnished glow whereas conserving their power largely in reserve. Welser-Möst solely not often introduced them in at full power in a affected person and potent efficiency, however when he did, it was large.
Your entire orchestra was in nice kind, proving that whilst epic a bit as Bruckner’s Fourth might be made to sound completely at residence within the intimate acoustics of the Mandel Live performance Corridor. Welser-Möst selected tempos that allowed the music to unfold with out haste or exaggerated gear modifications, and he stored his imaginative and prescient on the large image, not getting misplaced within the myriad particulars alongside the best way. This allowed the expansive symphony to take time sketching out its wide-ranging imaginative and prescient, and to unfold as if in a single breath.
Significantly profitable was the gradual motion, which might appear limitless in lots of performances. It feels like a type of nocturnal procession, or maybe the ideas of a solitary wanderer strolling at evening. Most performances degenerate right into a mushy trudge that makes the music really feel limitless as an alternative of timeless, however Welser-Möst quietly stored issues shifting, encouraging a lithe rhythmic response by the Cleveland strings – with attractive singing from the violas and cellos – that stored it centered. German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler used to decelerate and path off of each phrase in the primary theme, an evocative however finally tiring mannerism. Welser-Möst as an alternative achieved an evocative really feel by conserving the essential tempo going whereas barely dovetailing these phrases and constructing phrase upon phrase. It was a delicate however essential method of creating the music really feel natural. I additionally adore that Welser-Möst averted the same old spots the place the motion can sag at transitions, locations the place many conductors try to linger. Right here, the lingering emotion registered with out letting the quiet pulse falter.
The Scherzo was thrilling, with out a reckless, hyped-up tempo. Welser-Möst allowed sufficient area for the brass to register with fullness of tone, with out unleashing them at full power. Better of all was the quiet trio, which was performed with a young dreaminess as beautiful as something I’ve ever heard. The woodwinds had been a miracle of heat and colour.
The Finale of Bruckner’s Fourth is essentially the most tough, with its triple-theme sonata kind threatening to derail due to the acute modifications of temper from part to part. Welser-Möst charted a gradual course together with his eye on the cathartic shut, which was achieved with a profound sense of accomplishment. Essentially the most evident change of the Korstvedt version of the rating was the omission of the return of the primary motion’s theme within the horns through the closing peroration, but it surely didn’t maintain the closing pages from hovering. It was wonderful to observe a Midwestern American viewers within the age of TikTok cease their determined, stressed seek for distraction for seventy minutes to be taken to a completely different religious degree by a plain-spoken however profoundly gripping efficiency of a symphony, after which erupt in an ecstatic ovation. It proves how hungry persons are for actual substance. It makes me assume there may be hope for this world.
No much less profound, in its method, was the efficiency of Mozart’s ‘Haffner’ Symphony. Written for a patron whose title nonetheless graces it, the ‘Haffner’ is a miracle of joyful grace. It’s the form of rating that Welser-Möst would have performed just a little rigidly twenty-five years in the past. However lately, he has grown immensely in his potential to make non-programmatic music converse. With out ever introducing crude exaggerations, he has discovered learn how to let phrases ebb and movement, making Mozart’s lucid writing unfold virtually like human speech. The music spoke with elegant appeal, taking off like a rocket within the fast and witty closing motion, the Cleveland violins at their nimble finest.
Music-making on this degree brings deep pleasure, and it showcased the very best points of Welser-Möst’s tenure in Cleveland. There are nonetheless those that dislike his reserved and understated method, however performances like this show simply how a lot might be mentioned with out frothing on the mouth and grandstanding. It was merely eloquent.
Mark Sebastian Jordan
