Dreams and visions – Cleveland Orchestra@ Severance Hall 5/12/10
It maybe wasn’t exactly necessary for the home-town crowd to have the versatility of one of its star players demonstrated so thoroughly, but that is certainly what we heard and saw last Thursday night. Oh, at Severance Hall, I mean. Franklin Cohen has been a world-class artist on his chosen instrument – the clarinet – for decades. He’s performed in a solo capacity in front of his orchestral team-mates nearly every season, I think, since he became a member of the Cleveland Orchestra – or at least, 180 or so different performances.
But this time, he exceeded even his own self as master, genius, mystic, what have you. The vehicle for this exposition was the not-very-well-known (as of yet) The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. Mr. Golijov claims a wide variety of traditions as influence on his musical writings—a combination, I think, unlike anyone else in the music business these days. Or maybe ever, actually. Among them are European, American, Latin, Christian, Jewish, making a delightful mixed dish flavored by classical chamber music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and tango nuevo! (And you won’t find that particular mixture just any only place, either, believe me.) We Clevelanders are exceedingly fortunate to have heard several of Mr. Golijov’s works in the last few years; having heard even one places him indelibly in the listener’s mind.
It would take a better musician than I am to provide an analytical description of this piece. I can state only that I truly enjoyed it, and was constantly in awe of the soloist – and the conductor – assistant conductor Tito Muñoz, who successfully negotiated the tricky paths, keeping everyone together, and ending up in the proper places at the proper times.
The music itself was variously fast, slow, loud, soft, jazzy, mystical, strange—and downright lovely. The composer seems to thoroughly understand the clarinet in all its manifestations, not just the ordinary B-flat instrument. Mr. Cohen also performed on E-flat and bass clarinet, plus, I think the Bassett horn (a lower-pitched clarinet.) On any of them, at any given time, Mr. Cohen’s sound went from delicate to raucous and back with wide leaps between notes, lovely melodies alternated with agitated-sounding shrieks and wailings—and all within the space of a heartbeat or two. Incredible.
The final portion of the program was given over to a standard ‘war-horse’ of a piece: Symphonie fantastique by Hector Berlioz. It’s very high on my list of personal favorites, and I love it when I hear things I’ve never heard in there before. Following a slightly leisurely beginning, (and conducting the massive and unwieldy score from memory) Mr. Muñoz added some elastic to the tempos here and there, allowing inner voices to be heard more clearly. There was a new degree of transparency that brought out elements that were perhaps not previously heard so prominently.
The basic theme of this piece is the image of the beloved appearing in the opium-induced dreams of the artist (the composer, Berlioz.) After the opening movement’s dream, he next sees her at a ball, in which the harps were gorgeous in the lilting waltz. During a trip to the countryside, the offstage oboe of Frank Rosenwein and the onstage English horn of Robert Walters engage in a delightful dialogue in the middle section. The violas hummed along underneath until the thunder storm created by four tympani interrupted them.
All is not well for the artist and his beloved, as he dreams he’s killed her and marches to the scaffold for his execution. This began with wonderful muted horns, then the bassoons grumbled around some, and percussion that had to be seen to be believed, followed by terrifically biting trombones. (A lot of folks apparently accompany him to the scaffold, but not quite all the way!) Principal bassoon John Clouser was great in his moto perpetuo solos.
Having joined his beloved in death (apparently) they now go together to the Witches’ Sabbath. What a commotion! The supersoft beginning is soon belied by the the wailing of Daniel McKelway’s E-flat clarinet in a warped version of the beloved’s theme (idée fixe). There’s a little bit of the Dies Irae, plus the bells (played offstage by percussion principal Richard Weiner), two tubas, and again two sets of tympani and two bass drums being beat to within an inch of their lives! It was entirely magnificent chaos!
This concert concerned with dreams and visions opened with the champagne bubbles of the overture to Die Fledermaus by Vienna’s Johann Strauss, Jr., in a lighter-than-air performance. Overall, the evening provided an enthralling mixture of hard-to-grasp wispy drifts and great substance.
If you have tickets for either of the two concerts by the Cleveland Orchestra and music director Franz Welser-Möst this week, please inspect your tickets to be sure you end up at the concert on the right night and the right time. Concerts are Wednesday evening at 8 and Sunday evening at 7 pm. Unless, of course, you’re off to Carnegie Hall on Friday evening! Music by Beethoven and Berg are scheduled.
For complete details, visit the website: http://www.clevelandorchestra.com or call the ticket office at 216.231.1111.
From Cool Cleveland contributor Kelly Ferjutz, who writes: My most recently published book is Ardenwycke Unveiled (e-book and trade paper). Cerridwen has another contemporary romance from me, But Not For Love, currently available only as an e-book, but perhaps will be in print later this year. I hope to soon get around to completing some of the 30+ incomplete books in my computer!By the way, Cerridwen has also accepted two of my short stories in their Scintillating Samples (complimentary reads) area: Song of the Swan and ”Unexpected Comfort. I love photography as well, as you can see here. Occasionally I teach writing workshops and sometimes do editing or ghostwriting on a free-lance basis. But over and above everything else, there’s always been the writing. I can’t imagine my life without it.
And now, after more than a few requests, I’ve started a blog about writing. You can find it here.