The Cleveland Orchestra II: at Carnegie Hall, New York City, 05.10.2006 (BH)

 

Dvořák: Symphony No. 5 in F Major, Op. 76 (1875)
Hanspeter Kyburz: touché (2005-2006, New York Premiere)
Debussy: La Mer (1903-05)

 

The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, Music Director and Conductor
Laura Aikin, Soprano
John Mark Ainsley, Tenor

 

The flowers from opening night were gone, but in their place was floridness of a different variety, Dvořák’s rarely done Fifth Symphony.  It is typically tuneful, and hearing it dispatched by Franz Welser-Möst with the sweep and technical assurance of the Clevelanders, I couldn’t grasp why this piece is not heard more often in the concert hall.  Dvořák’s early symphonies can seem slightly too straightforward compared to the sophistication of the Sixth through the Ninth, but here one can sense the composer turning a compositional corner, with the great heights he reached in the last symphonies coming into view.  In four traditionally structured movements, the Fifth is a model of a classical European symphony, with plenty of beguiling moments.  Surely there were at least a handful of people in the audience for whom this Dvořák symphony is their favorite, and they must have been delighted with the loving care and fastidious playing lavished upon it.

The big news of this fascinating program was the New York premiere of touché by Hanspeter Kyburz, originally from Nigeria and now living in Berlin.  My first exposure to Kyburz was last season, when Sir Simon Rattle brought Noesis, a huge pixilated canvas of sounds gorgeously performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, and touché is also a glittering feast for an orchestra.  The premise involves a bickering couple trading sarcastic barbs at each other (intriguingly imagined by Kyburz’ collaborator, Sabine Marienberg), with their dialogue splintered into fragments of just a single word or two.  Laura Aikin, in gleaming form, called her partner “a wimp, a simp…a wishy washy windbag,” to which John Mark Ainsley shot back, “Well wailed, Miss sound-of siren.”  Aikin sounded terrific, as did Ainsley when one could make out the words, and their rapport was not only beautifully sung but had the taut edge of two lovers captured in the middle of a quarrel.  The principal disappointment for me was that Kyburz’s program notes were a bit more intriguing than the results.  I have no idea if he intended the text to be understood, but with both singers fairly immersed in a tidal wave of orchestral beauty, I was grateful for the supertitles.

In any case, the textures made a fine companion to Debussy’s La Mer, which ended the evening with some of the most sensuous playing of the night.  Welser-Möst pulled out all the stops in a handsomely shaped reading that illuminated all the reasons this magnificent group continues to be revered, from the dark wells of strings to the tiny details by flute, clarinet and oboe that are such key ingredients in this score.  Not the least of the pleasures were moments of pure pianissimo.  Playing very, very softly while maintaining tension and articulation separate the great ensembles from the merely good, and when the Cleveland Orchestra whispers, it has the authority of a shout. 

 

 

Bruce Hodges