The Cleveland Orchestra’s pre-recorded “In Focus” concerts continued with a brilliant performance led by Franz Welser-Möst of Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin’s 1967 ballet Carmen Suite. Shchedrin wrote the ballet as a star vehicle for his wife Maya Plisetskaya, prima ballerina of Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet.
On first hearing, one could wonder what kinds of late 1960s mind-altering drugs the composer might have been on. Shchedrin’s use of Bizet’s Carmen is, to say the least, unusual, for an orchestra of strings, timpani, and four percussion players on a massive battery of instruments. Shchedrin’s ballet pays only slight attention to the opera, freely rearranging the order of musical scenes, sometimes even omitting the melody (e.g., the Toreador song) and leaving only the harmonic underpinnings. In the middle of the suite Shchedrin even inserts an arrangement of the manic “Farandole” from Bizet’s L’Arlesienne. Despite its unique eccentricity, the composer strips the opera to its essentials, even leaving out the character Micaëla to focus on the love triangle of Don José, Carmen, and Escamillo. In many places, Shchedrin’s score forces the listener to pay attention to details of the characters’ inner thoughts, as reflected in his music.
Welser-Möst, a brilliant and committed opera conductor, led The Cleveland Orchestra in a fantastic performance, both in the aspect of fantasy and in musical excellence. He never condescended to the seemingly bizarre twists and turns of the score, but led it as a fully formed entity in itself. The string sections displayed a vast array of textures, from the most delicate opening and closing passages of the suite, to the dense, menacing hues of the fortune telling scene. The mysterious “Toreador and Carmen” was played with transparent simplicity, a melody line over a pizzicato accompaniment. The opera’s prelude is moved to the finale, with dueling marimba players chattering away on the melody, while the strings’ interjections became increasingly sinister.