Some orchestras change their chief conductors the way others change their shirts. Is it any wonder that those who retained their podium matadors over long periods, the likes of Mravinsky, Ormandy and Karajan, regularly provided ample testament to the highest possible playing standards? In Cleveland, they know the value of that kind of commitment. George Szell was there for 24 years, and the current Music Director, Franz Welser-Möst, has already been in post for over two decades and is only the seventh since the orchestra’s inception in 1918.
The Cleveland Orchestra had brought with them a tale of two loves. There are no simple explanations as to what the word itself means. It manifests itself in different ways; it takes on different forms. Berg’s Lyric Suite, originally conceived as a string quartet, is the record of a doomed love affair between the composer and a married woman. Described by one of Berg’s pupils, Theodor Adorno, as “a latent opera”, it plays with numerology and ciphers. Duration in various sections relates to the number of letters in the lovers’ names: 23 for Albano Maria Johannes Berg and 10 for Hanna Fuchs, and four-note cells based on their initials A-B flat-B natural-F (in German notation) repeatedly surface.
Three middle movements forming the Three Pieces in the 1928 arrangement for string orchestra showed the impressive strength of the Cleveland strings (18 first and 16 second violins), the clarity of the individual lines accentuated by the crystalline acoustic. In the central Allegro misterioso it was like listening to the collective beating of the wings of humming birds, a pattern of filigree playing done with the utmost delicacy and precision. Yet though one could marvel at the virtuosity, the heart was never really stirred. The opening Andante amoroso lacked a soft and caressing touch, the passion in the concluding Adagio appassionato never really cresting any waves. Altogether, this was not so much the pangs of wild and physical longing, more a case of intense eye-contact across the dinner table.
Bruckner dedicated his Symphony no. 9 in D minor to “dear God” in a summation of total religious and personal commitment to his Maker. While still working on it, and side-tracked by endless revisions of his earlier works, he is reported to have told his doctor: “God would only have Himself to blame if He received a work that was unfinished.” And so it turned out to be. Welser-Möst produced a straight-down-the-middle reading, if anything, at well under the hour, a somewhat brisk traversal with no tempo fluctuations or indulgences of phrasing, his metronomic beat always precise and explicit.
The Cleveland Orchestra as presently constituted produced a compact sound, with excellent internal balances and a brass section which even in the biggest climaxes never once swamped the strings. Dynamic calibrations were engineered effortlessly, like turning up the volume dial on an amplifier, only to slowly reverse the process. Weight and power were there in spades, but also the softest of pianissimos. Individual players commanded respect, such as a principal oboe that “speaks” and a first horn that could growl, mutter, rasp and yet sing lyrically where required.
In Bruckner’s final symphonic statement, as earlier in the Berg, I couldn’t help feeling that Welser-Möst is ruled by his head and not by his heart. He certainly knew how to make climaxes tell, but muscle and sinew take you only so far. Not much mystery and magisterial awe in the opening movement, the second subject starved of warmth, and little sense of terror in the Scherzo. Some kinds of love are merely hinted at and not openly expressed.
