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| Oct. 11, 2004. 01:00 AM |  |
Cleveland Orchestra worth drive
Music director does full justice to Mahler's
Third Symphony
WILLIAM LITTLER
CLEVELAND—Insanity
takes many forms, one of the more benign being the notion of driving 5 1/2
hours to Cleveland for a symphony concert.But since two friends were
sharing the actual driving and I could doze comfortably in the back seat
of a BMW, I have not made an appointment with the psychiatrist at the end
of the block. I would have travelled even farther on the weekend for the opportunity to hear the Cleveland Orchestra play Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony at Severance Hall.If you have never visited Severance Hall, a visual and aural treat awaits you. Located
on Euclid Ave., known in Cleveland's industrial heyday as America's Champs-Elysées,
the handsome neo-classical structure sits only a short stroll down the street
from its handsome neo-classical neighbour, one of the major culture vulture
destinations of the continent, the Cleveland Museum of Art.Neo-classicism
gives way to luxuriant art deco inside the marble foyer Severance Hall, which
benefits from the greatest acoustical intimacy enjoyed by any of America's
so-called Big Five Orchestras.And make no mistake, the Cleveland Orchestra
belongs among the Big Five. For many informed observers of the symphonic
scene it is not only the greatest orchestra within a tank of gas of Toronto,
it is America's greatest orchestra, period.True, there were a few chips off the marble in its playing of the Mahler Third, taken particularly by the brass section. In the overall picture, they scarcely mattered. Orchestral playing of this level of virtuosity is seldom even approached in Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall.Virtuosity
isn't everything, to be sure. At this summer's Lucerne Festival I heard an
even more beautifully played Cleveland Orchestra performance of Mahler's
Seventh Symphony that left me strangely unmoved.The Austrian-born
Franz Welser-Möst, now in the early weeks of his third season as the orchestra's
music director, conducted both performances and continues to arouse mixed
feelings.Sometimes, as in the case of most of Mahler III, he seems to be right inside the music. Sometimes, as in all of Mahler VII, he seems to be on the outside, looking in.As
conductors go, he is still a relatively youthful 44 and with a confidence-building
contract extending all the way to 2012, he and the Clevelanders have plenty
of time to dig more deeply into the scores at hand.Already this summer
in Lucerne they gave evidence of a level of commitment to contemporary music
rare among front line international orchestras by collaborating with the
Roche pharmaceutical company, the festival and Carnegie Hall to introduce
the first of three new works being added to the repertoire over a three year
period.Night's Black Bird by Britain's Sir Harrison Birtwistle
was not only premiered at the Lucerne Festival (as will be a new work by
Chinese-born Chen Yi next summer) but included as part of the orchestra's
European tour repertoire before being taken to Carnegie Hall.The Cleveland
Orchestra is not an institution prone to snap judgments. Birtwistle was chosen
for this commission only after the players had already had experience of
his music through previous pieces. Prior to taking up its music directorship, Welser-Möst had already conducted the orchestra an impressive 70 times.Yes,
Cleveland's orchestra is obviously in there for the long haul. And the Ohio
community's commitment to its orchestra appears to be no less long-term.How is it that a medium-sized American city can play host to one of the leading orchestras in the world? In part by being willing to pay for it.Just
as its city fathers determined to give Cleveland a world-class art museum,
they paid and continue to pay cold cash to build and maintain a concert hall
and orchestra of comparable stature.As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. And as the weekend's performance of Mahler's Third Symphony confirmed, Cleveland pays for the best.Additional articles by William Littler
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