Grace under pressure? Yes, even pouring rain couldn’t ruin the splendid fiddling by guest soloist Gil Shaham when he played Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra Saturday night at Blossom Music Center. In Shaham’s case “played” is the right word to describe the musical collaboration between Shaham, the orchestra, and conductor Pablo Heras-Casado.
The (oft-times) breakneck pace dictated by Barber’s work, a piece originally commissioned as a challenge for an up-and-coming violinist (who later rejected the work as too difficult to play), calls for virtuosic chops for the soloist and extreme alertness for his collaborators. If there was strain, it didn’t show. Everyone on stage seemed to be having a great time. The melodic bliss of the first two movements made for perfect summer harmony (cloudy skies not withstanding). The rapidly paced concluding movement shattered the happy trance with passages reminiscent of the “Devil Went Down to Georgia” fiddling contest of southern lore. Wonderful fun.
The concert also included in easy-listening rendition of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 and a snappy Spanish rendition of Manuel De Falla’s Music from “The Three-Cornered Hat.”
What’s up next? Music Director Franz Welser-Most conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in a concert featuring Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 at 8 p.m. Aug. 7. Welser-Most will also lead the 7 p.m. Aug. 8 concert that includes Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” and Schubert’s Symphony No. 4. The Orchestra will play these same works on its European festivals tour Aug. 17-29.
Get more information at http://www.ClevelandOrchestra.com
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.