At The Cleveland Orchestra this weekend, guest conductor Fabio Luisi took the podium in a program centered on a world premiere, bookended by works spanning the 19th century. Weber’s overture to his final opera Oberon made for an enticing curtain-raiser. A luminous horn call (Nathaniel Silberschlag) opened, leading in due course to the realm of the fantastical, radiating gossamer textures that would soon become synonymous with Mendelssohn. The resonant clarinet solo from Afendi Yusuf further evidenced the high level of orchestral playing, and perhaps owing to his time helming the opera houses of Zurich and New York, Luisi purveyed an operatic drama with natural aplomb.
Israeli composer Oded Zehavi had contemplated writing a concerto for piccolo since his student days under George Crumb. Upon hearing TCO principal Mary Kay Fink perform at the Cleveland Institute of Music nearly a decade ago, he found a player to write for and the inspiration to bring the conception to fruition. The result of the collaboration was a 14-minute concerto titled Aurora, a TCO commission that received its premiere this weekend. A belated premiere, that is, as it was originally programmed during the early months of the Covid pandemic (though March 2020 saw a performance of a chamber version scored for piccolo, piano and percussion).
A drone in the low strings began, with fragments of a melody taking shape, underpinned by tolling bells. Rarely offered a spot in the limelight, the lyrical potential of the piccolo was explored with long-breathed melodies deftly skirting the more banal, cliched uses of the instrument. Zehavi has acknowledged a panoply of cross-cultural influences, owing to his childhood in Jerusalem, perhaps evidenced by the work’s colorful scoring. Generally meditative and ponderous, it occasionally rose to more animated moments. It’s a piece that I confess didn’t make the strongest impression on first hearing, but one I suspect would continue to reveal more and more.
Brahms’ Fourth Symphony closed the evening in familiar territory. Luisi gently eased into the rise and fall of the primary theme, delicately articulated so as to capitalize on the ensemble’s refinement. Each successive guise of theme was given a nuanced reading, from the muscular and full-bodied to the barren and skeletal. Lovely playing from the woodwinds marked the slow movement, oscillating between material lyrical and stentorian, save for some unfortunate blips in the horns.
Barnstorming and with vigor, the Allegro giocoso was further decorated by use of the triangle – glittering and decidedly un-Brahmsian. Luisi, conducting without score and without baton, opted for the finale to follow attacca. Eight mighty chords formed the rigid spine of the passacaglia, a form the erudite composer resurrected from the past. But Saturday night’s performance hardly sounded dry and academic, and instead offered a robust and rewarding conclusion.
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