Little more can be added to what has already been said about this weekend’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts – see South Florida Classical Review. About Bronfman’s mastery, for example. Or the flawless interpretation of the Shostakovich 6. But one point is worth underscoring. The orchestra is bringing us a rich offering, unafraid of performing anything but the most beloved chestnuts. The 6 is not Shostakovich’s most performed and though the Russian master is hardly an unknown, he is a modern and that itself puts his work in a more than crowd-pleasing category. Brahms is, after Beethoven, the quintessence of the canon. Still, his music is challenging, never to be taken lightly. And to perform a new and boldly contemporary work, Shepherd’s Wanderlust, is to engage the Miami audience intelligently: This is what the Cleveland Orchestra is doing now, here it is, sample it. There are far more radical composers than this young man, who feels compelled to stay within the confines of the classical discourse; yet, there is no doubt of his contemporaneity. Judge his work and each of the other performances. But know that in Miami, as in Cleveland, this is the orchestra we signed up to hear.
A couple of concertgoers told me they could not hear Yefim Bronfman’s piano, which they found wonderful anyway, as clearly as they would’ve liked to. I always thought the acoustics at Knight Hall were near perfect and any seat was an excellent one — excepting wishes to see and be seen, and, more importantly, the pleasure of a good sight of a soloist, in this case, his hands. Anyone else encounter such issues at the hall, at this or any other concert?
Perhaps it was because I first encountered Sean Shepherd’s music online, that most disembodied medium, but when I finally heard him
performed by the Cleveland Orchestra at Knight Hall, I closed my eyes. There. That makes the most sense. One is usually curious about who is making what sounds, how deftly an instrument is fretted and bowed, what physical energy is fueling the feelings, in what manner the conductor is pulling and pushing a composition. But after a few minutes of watching, it felt better not to. As if Shepherd’s Wanderlust emanated from another dimension. An inner one. Touched by an outer one.
One is hesitant to give a style a tag right in the composer’s face, but isn’t this a kind of impressionism?, I asked. In the program notes, Shepherd himself explains how this work evokes landscape, or at least is inspired by it. And his first exposure to classical composition was the music of Debussy and Ravel — and Stravinsky. “It was the sound of heaven”, he says.
Rootlessness is the sense of the title. And now that the wanderer has wandered to our subtropics, how would he respond musically to this scene?
“
A hot sound,” he says. And inspired by the pop music of the region. Shepherd mentions Miami Sound Machine. “That sound would not make sense in Seattle”, he says.
He gets visual. “When I first saw Miami I was impressed by how overwhelmingly blue it was. While everywhere else was gray in winter, Miami was the blue of sky and sea. It felt like paradise.” His Miami sound would shun cool yellows and greens. And no “dark browns or taupe.” Instead, “brilliant reds and oranges and blues!”
The young composer — “Es un muchacho! [he's a boy!]“, said a concertgoer, in Spanish, when Shepherd was introduced after the performance — does not bring pop into the mix, as some contemporaries do. He stays within the classical discourse. But, true to his youth, he multi-media-tasks, listening to pop as he works on his compositions. “Some of my composer friends write while watching TV,” he says. “We composers are a weird lot.”
And what does he listen to? New York indie scene mostly (Shepherd lives in Brooklyn). “I like things that are clever, charming. I like spark.”
Which is as good a tag for his own music as any.
Walking into the middle of a session for U of Miami Frost School of Music composition students guided by Sean Shepherd at a room in the Knight Hall is like entering a scene from an elegant and spare art movie. The room is modern. So is the music. Most of the characters are young and casually attired. Everyone is very intense and intent on playing and listening.
With Cleveland Orchestra musicians interpreting the work with the same seriousness they play the masters, this was the first time these young composers heard their music precisely, sharply, as they wrote it. Which was enlightening, for both flaws and brilliance stood out, sometimes concurrently. When all musicians softened their sound to a clear but gentle piano and the cello continued as written by one of the student composers, the beauty of that string passage stood out, a veritable solo or moving lyricism, something the composer in question had not quite heard before.
Where will all this wonderful talent end up? Earlier, listening to a whole student orchestra that was doing a bang-up job, at a session with Giancarlo Guerrero, Cleveland Orchestra Miami managing director Bruce Coppock pointed out the huge gap between music school graduates and available orchestra jobs throughout the country. Classical music is enjoying an unparalleled renaissance, the fruit of a great educational system, at least at the higher levels, as the example of the U of Miami shows. But running an orchestra is such an expensive enterprise that many, as we all know, are going bankrupt.
The musicians are here, hot to play. The public is here, hot to listen. To echo the disco era, where do you go when the music stops?
They’re in town. Once more The Cleveland Orchestra has begun its yearly Miami residency. By now, the orchestra is woven into the fabric of cultural life in our city. But no complacency. A new managing director, Bruce Coppock, has been talking to our community to better understand the curious phenom that is Miami and make changes in the project. What? He has not talked to you? No problem. This is the most democratic of media — as long as democracy includes Internet access. Let him, us, know what you think, right here in our Comments.
What should the Cleveland Orchestra be about in its Miami residency? What? You don’t think there should be a Miami residency? Tell him, us, that then.
Some concertgoers have told me they want the full Monty. Meaning the orchestra and Franz (Welser-Möst)
too. This weekend you got him, conducting the orchestra. Others, myself included, think we should hear the orchestra playing new music, like they do back home. We got that too, with a composition by Sean Shepherd, who’s in town for the occasion. And, of course, there’s Brahms — easy on the listeners who crave the canon, hard as hell on the musicians, who have to stretch, quite literally, to perform him. And Shostakovich, that passionate modern.
Speaking of passion, principal guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero has been around too.
At the University of Miami Frost School of Music he sat in with the students and passed on what he’s learned, including the need to keep learning, to always ask questions no matter how basic. “What I need is to go to Little Havana to play dominos,” said Guerrero, an addict of the game.
So stay with us. We will be talking to Shepherd. Always a privilege to chat up a composer in a genre where, let’s face it, most of the music was written by guys who are, like, dead. And we’ll be going to the concert. They’re off.
One of Julio Cortazar’s eerie short stories takes place in a concert hall, where a performance is so well received that the audience rises spontaneously to a wildly enthusiastic standing ovation, and continues to be so moved that they rush toward the stage to render their appreciation to the conductor. The Argentine master of magical realism describes the rush along aisles and corridors, as the elegantly dressed crowd flows toward the object of their admiration. Soon enough it’s clear that enthusiasm has degenerated into pandemonium. And beyond. Without bearing witness to the act of audience love, Cortazar tells how some of the public return from their rush smacking their lips. The insane implication is that they loved the musician so much that they ate him!
I first heard Andre Watts in 1969 in Madrid. If memory serves me right, he played the same Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 he performed Thursday September 22 with the Eugene Symphony at their season’s opening night. A rock star of the classical world, as he was called recently — and retroactively, for that term was not used back then — Watts was exceptionally well received that Madrid night in ’69. So enthusiastic was the audience that a friend remarked to me that this might turn into the Cortazar story — a fan of the Argentine narrator, I got the reference right away. Andre Watts was so good at the piano that we all wanted to eat him up.
Last night, a veteran, not a bright young thing took the stage. From the very first notes, it was clear that Watts’s touch with Romantic music was as powerful as ever, the dominion of his instrument at the service of his heart. This is the music of big emotions, not to mention some of the most gorgeous melodies in the classical repertoire. Hear it and feel it.
And when the concerto ended, the audience, as in my youth, rose in wild applause — whooped and hollered, for that matter. Andre Watts was still good enough to eat.
Visiting Oregon, I was having my first experience with the Eugene Symphony, which has a natural tie to the Cleveland Orchestra in its Miami Residency. For it was Eugene conductor Giancarlo Guerrero who was called for a last minute fill-in with The Cleveland Orchestra years ago, to perform scheduled material new to Guerrero. He did it so masterfully that he was asked to return, and when The Cleveland Orchestra decided to engage a principal guest conductor for its Miami Residency, the former Eugene conductor seemed like the natural choice.
The Eugene Symphony’s other numbers, Ravel‘s La Alborada del Gracioso and Respighi’s The Pines of Rome, were also very well received. They are both showy, well-known and festive pieces, perfect for an opening night. The Hult Center Silva Concert Hall appeared full. The Eugene Symphony, under music director Danail Rachev, is doing exceptionally well in these trying times for orchestras. From the diagonally opposite end of the country, where The Cleveland Orchestra spends some of the winter, we wish them continued good fortune, more great concerts, and that its good karma — this is Eugene, OR, after all — flow our way.
After a long hiatus, some very broad musings on The Cleveland Orchestra.
Bruce Coppock, the new director of the Orchestra’s Miami Residency, calls the Orchestra “arguably the best orchestra in the country, one of the top in the world.” True, there are few American orchestras that could match, never mind surpass, the excellence of The Cleveland Orchestra. And, in the world, there are orchestras whose characteristics include differences in the interpretation of a piece, but The Cleveland Orchestra stands among the best.
The question remains, what accounts for the excellence. I pondered this thought during the last Miami season, as I sat through each concert, caught in the awe of hearing one hundred instrumentalists sound as one magnificent instrument. As Giancarlo Guerrero, principal guest conductor of the Miami Residency, points out, The Cleveland Orchestra is an ensemble of soloists. Each musician delivers such a virtuoso performance that the whole is more like a chamber ensemble, except amplified by the number of musicians.
Yet, that only accounts for each performance. What makes the whole of this, or any other orchestra for that matter, cohere. Conductor comes to mind. Yes. But the season gave us three conductors of different personalities and approaches. One could diverge on the merits of each interpretation, but not on the quality of the sound.
Tradition. Indeed. None of the original musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra perform today — as in any age-old orchestra, they are no longer alive. This extends to any institution. None of the original faculty of Harvard University live today either. A tradition of excellence accounts for much of what makes either institution what it is today. Orchestras and universities, like civilizations, rise and fall. Some, however, prevail. What is the mortar that holds them together?
Conductor, yes, conductor again. Current conductor, of course, meaning musical director Franz Welser-Möst. But there has to be a beginning. “The Cleveland Orchestra was in effect created by George Szell“, Joseph Horowitz, author of Classical Music in America, tells this blogger. “Its actual sounds dates from his tenure.”
According to Horowitz, it was Szell’s tenure as conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra (1946-1970) what cemented the music we hear today. Of course, that tradition must be maintained, or at least not damaged. Szell’s successor, Lorin Maazel, “left no footprints, a good thing for the orchestra,” Horowitz reports.
And he sums it up: “to this day the Cleveland is a refined instrument, hyper-attentive to balance. That is Szell’s legacy.”
Do we need classical music education?
For this blog we’ve talked with several of the Cleveland Orchestra musicians who are involved in educational projects in Miami, mostly with very young public school students, and we have witnessed major artists give master classes or conduct guest rehearsals at the University of Miami Frost School of Music. We have observed, and recorded, how students of all ages find the experience enriching, even thrilling. And it will continue. As long as the orchestra comes to Miami, there will be a variety of educational projects in which its members will engage.
Even if classical music education were a staple of public schools, the musicians’ visits would be invaluable. Take what happens much later, at the university level, where students whose specialty is music draw riches from the different perspectives of visiting artists. But there is a big difference between a school of music and a public school. In the latter, classical music is not a staple.
Should it be? After all, this is a rarefied art form that public students from less than privileged backgrounds may never encounter in their lives. All the pity. Even as classical music commands a certain elitism — even the name “classical” speaks this — which in the material world translates to class, there are those who would have it be different.
A few years ago, I was fortunate to attend a National Endowment for the Arts seminar on arts journalism that aimed to train neophytes like me in covering classical music. In the seminar, I was exposed to some very high-level critics and other important figures in the field — the head of the Endowent spoke to us. Among them I found a truly democratic current running. Inspired by figures like Brahms and Dvorak, these authorities were eager to debunk elitism. In me, they found an enthusiastic student, for I believe, as they did, that in a democracy the arts belong to everyone.
Which doesn’t mean you don’t need to be educated in the arts. Should an education in classical music be a staple of public education? I would say yes. Classical music is a major artistic discipline that speaks of tradition as well as of radical change. To try to understand it is to try to understand the world one lives in, and, by extension, who one is. And to open oneself to the music is to open oneself to a sensuousness that is an essential part of the “happiness” the pursuit of which our Declaration of Independence claimed was an inalienable right.
Yet, not everyone partakes of that right. The reasons are complicated. Artificial exclusionary boundaries have been set by our culture, precisely the boundaries that music education erases. There is a cost factor, as with the other arts, which limits the consumption of music to the better off. And there is a complexity to the music and a history that only education can give a key to their understanding and appreciation. Thus, I would argue that classical music should not be snooty. Classical music should be accessible. Classical music education should be for everyone, a part of the essential curriculum, as much as math, of which it partakes in large doses, and history, of which it is an essential element.
That musicians of the caliber of those who play with the Cleveland Orchestra come teach our children is priceless. More than this is needed, but this is a start.
The Cleveland Orchestra’s Bruckner Symphonies are a not-to-be-missed event for, arguably, Franz Welser-Möst is the ideal conductor of his fellow Austrian’s work. Some will travel to the Lincoln Center Festival to catch them. But there is another venue, perfect for a summer sojourn. Blossom, the orchestra’s summer home in a bucolic Ohio setting, a kind of Midwestern Tanglewood, if you will.
Franz will conduct Brucker’s 8th on July 9 at Blossom. July 10, Franz will pair Bruckner with John Adams, as he is doing in New York, with a performance of the former’s Symphony No. 9 and Adams’ Violin Concerto. The correspondences between “the grandfather of minimalism”, as Franz has called his 19th 
century compatriot, and America’s most important contemporary composer are subtle, but they should be intriguing to concertgoers. Not to mention that, in spite of their “minimalist” reputations, both composers are passionate and lyrical, pleasurable to the concertgoer who, regardless of school or approach, enjoys being swept away by music.
The yearly Blossom Festival offers a wealth of Cleveland Orchestra performances of Mozart, Mendelssohn, Britten, Prokofiev and Beethoven. The orchestra will also delve into Bernstein, Berlin, Porter and others from the Great American Songbook. It’s summer, it’s outdoors, it’s relaxed, though always masterly.
And in August, a return of the Joffrey Ballet for an encounter with the Cleveland Orchestra doing Balanchine‘s choreography of Stravinsky Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.
The Blossom Festival stretches July through September. Travelers may prefer flying to Akron, which is closer to Blossom than Cleveland. The Sheraton Suites Akron/Cuyahoga Falls is a full-service hotel near the festival site and http://www.nps.gov/cuva/planyourvisit/lodging.htm gives information on lodging in Akron and in Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
For dining options at Blossom visit http://www.clevelandorchestra.com/visit/blossom-dining.aspx. Orchestra insiders recommend Crave in Akron (http://www.eatdrinkcrave.com/flash/index.htm), Pub Bricco in the Merriman Valley, two miles southwest of Blossom (http://www.briccoakron.com/) and Chrissie Hynde’s Vegiterranean (http://www.thevegiterranean.com/). Many Akron venues are available at http://www.downtownakron.com/.
Anton Bruckner‘s music has “a towering presence,” says Carolyn Warner, pianist and violinist with The Cleveland Orchestra. It is, she says, “monumental.” Warner, whose mother is Austrian, has a special relationship with Bruckner, having first encountered the Austrian composer when she was fresh out of school, at her first job, with the Buffalo Philharmonic.
“William Steinberg came to conduct the Bruckner 4,” Warner recalls. “It was a transformative experience.”
In July, Warner will play Bruckner, as The Cleveland Orchestra performs his symphonies 5, 7, 8 and 9 at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York City, led by Franz Welser-Möst, in a program titled BRUCKNER: (R)EVOLUTION. Click on the link at the website will offer you chances to hear Welser-Möst discuss Bruckner on video and hear the orchestra perform excerpts from the symphonies.
The monumental nature of the music, Warner observes, has to do with the use of large orchestras, the Wagner tuba, brass instruments for towering moments, and intimate moments that build up to the towering ones. And yet, Warner agrees with The Cleveland Orchestra’s musical director, who calls Bruckner “the grandfather of minimalism.”
“I know what Franz means,” she says. “Bruckner has a very systematic way of building to climactic moments, repeating themes; and repetition is minimalism.” By repetition, Warner means “using the minimal amount of material and still create motion, build momentum; it goes somewhere.”
And Franz Welser-Möst is Bruckner’s ideal interpreter. “Franz has a great understanding of the folk material that Bruckner used, and he is steeped in the tradition of the area.” The Lincoln Center concerts are “an amazing pairing of composer and conductor, and, of course, orchestra.”
On the program are works by John Adams, whom Warner calls, “one of the foremost minimalist composers of our times.” This pairing, Warner says, is a gift to New York’s sophisticated audience, who will be able to sense the connection between Adams and Bruckner. “An Austrian icon and an American one,” says Warner.
For special packages to the Lincoln Center Festival, visit http://www.lincolncenterfestival.org/index.php/festival-packages
And for individual tickets, go to, http://www.lincolncenterfestival.org/index.php/cleveland-orchestra-2011
 | Enrique Fernández, "Critic in Residence" for the Cleveland Orchestra Miami, is blogging his thoughts about the Miami experience. Read More |
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