10/11/12 @ Severance Hall
Reviewed by Laura Kennelly
Those who imagine classical music is stuffy would have been surprised by guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero. The popular conductor (who has regular gigs as conductor in Nashville and in Florida) bounced on stage Thursday night as if he couldn’t wait to launch the Cleveland Orchestra’s first offering, Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka.”
Conducting sans score (as he did for all except the new work by Stephen Paulus) Guerrero gave a light, yet dramatic touch to this music originally intended for ballet. With no dancers in the stage, the instrumentalists provided movement and drama in the story of “puppets gone wild.” The celesta and piano, drum, harp, and cymbals, were especially lively, but the brass proved funniest at times as they made rude “blaats” that suggested farts.
The concluding work, Ravel’s easy-to-love, “Rapsodie espagnole,” featured lush string arrangements and romantic Hollywood-type sound. For personal reasons, this listener especially loved the opening movement, “Prelude a la Nuit,” because it recalled the title song from the 1944 film Laura [music by David Raskin, words by Johnny Mercer].
In between came a world premiere performance of Stephen Paulus’ “Violin Concerto No. 3,” a work written with Cleveland Orchestra principal violinist William Preucil in mind. It’s a modern work that dares to be beautiful (as critics like to say of new music that *is* beautiful) while it mixes whimsy–created by whisks, flutes, xylophones, and more–with stunning showy violin solos that Preucil commanded and brought to vivid life. The whole concert thrilled the audience, most of whom mirrored Guerrero’s enthusiasm for sharing an evening of music with the Cleveland Orchestra.
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.