Cleveland Orchestra @ Severance Hall
What? New[ish] music at Severance Hall? You bet and it was great. Four works by three contemporary composers made up a program that blended fanciful ideas with the clear crisp tones courtesy of The Cleveland Orchestra (as conducted by Franz Welser-Most). The opening work “Woven Dreams” (a new composition by Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa), began with a single tone (B-flat) which gradually expanded. According to a note by the composer, the work is based on his idea of what the world would sound like to an unborn baby. The result (which might be good to listen to while practicing yoga) is a blend of woodwinds, percussion, brass, and strings that does suggest the stuff of dreams, even for the born.
Another composer from Japan, the well-known Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996) was represented by “Garden Rain,” a smart and engaging piece for brass ensemble. Takemitsu’s arrangement, with two brass quintets bouncing notes off each other, suggested rain’s repetitive patterns as it begins, storms, and drips to a stop.
Bela Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard as soloist, offered an impressive blur of action and rhythm. Bartok’s work sparked thoughts of Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” (as program notes by Peter Laki suggested they might) and yet, mid-way through things seemed a bit muffled, rather than romantic. Aimard, who played with the score open on the piano, will be touring with The Cleveland Orchestra for the next several weeks.
The concluding work on the program, Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, proved to be the highlight of the evening. In a way, its blend of plucked and percussive instruments sounded like an ancestor of Hosokawa’s work, only writ much larger. From the opening fugue (with 12 different entrances, very exciting) to the final folk-dance (more what one would expect from Bartok, a composer who made his reputation on collecting folk tunes), the orchestra members seemed to be enjoying playing the piece. Shared musical joys almost (well, maybe it did) made Severance Hall rock. The Orchestra returns to Severance Hall Fri 2/11 – Sun 2/13 with Vladimir Jurowski conducting and Leonidas Kavakos as violin soloist.
Laura Kennelly is a freelance arts journalist, a member of the Music Critics Association of North America, and an associate editor of BACH, a scholarly journal devoted to J. S. Bach and his circle.Listening to and learning more about music has been a life-long passion. She knows there’s no better place to do that than the Cleveland area.