By Donald Waxman
On the weekend of Jan. 31, the Cleveland Orchestra gave its second pair of concerts in its current winter stint as the resident orchestra of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. This was its eighth year in a residency that has become the highlight of the South Florida concert season. The orchestra’s musical director and permanent conductor, Franz Welser-Möst, had prepared a program of uncommon interest.
Top billing on that program was Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, a tribute to the centennial that has been commemorating the 1913 premiere of the Rite. Also on the program was a rarely heard orchestral work of Debussy’s, Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien. On the first half of the concert the much-acclaimed British baritone Simon Keenlyside was heard in a group of six songs for voice and orchestra by Richard Strauss. The concert began with Strauss’ irresistible tone poem, Don Juan. Clearly, a program for connoisseurs.
There is no better curtain raiser than the opening bars of Don Juan, with the entire string section rising rapidly off the downbeat in a blaze of orchestral splendor. That first bar is also a notorious challenge for conductors often is used in auditions for aspiring young conductors. The slightest hesitation, any hint of inexactness in preparing the downbeat, and the opening can be ragged. With an almost imperceptible flick of the wrist followed by a precise sweep of his baton, Welser-Möst got the orchestra off to a razor sharp beginning. Don Juan is a virtuoso orchestral work, one in which every member of the orchestra is called on to be a virtuoso.
Strauss’ tone poem is about the most legendary rake in literature. His escapades have been recounted dozens of times, from Molière to Lord Byron. He is, of course, Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The story line in each version of the Don Juan legend differs somewhat, but the Don himself is always the same: womanizer, braggart, trickster, schemer; yet he is also heroic, and in the poet Lenau’s version that was the inspiration for Strauss’ tone poem, Don Juan is at the end gallant, letting himself be killed.
Strauss’ music follows the main dramatic episodes somewhat loosely, and the tone poem is remarkable in its rapid shifts from ardent to stormy to despondent. The test of a conductor is to weave these disparate episodes into one seamless whole, an instrumental opera lasting 15 minutes. Born to this music and having conducted it countless times, Welser-Möst delineated each of the fast moving episodes with color and clarity but without losing sight of the long line.
He is a patrician among conductors. Slim and long-limbed, he appears to have especially long arms. When he stretches both arms wide, as he does often at climactic sections, the span between the tip of the baton in his right hand and the tip of his outstretched left hand seems to be that of a large eagle. With those wide-stretched arms he appears to be embracing entire sections of the orchestra, exhorting them to ratchet up a climax yet another notch. And that they do. The rapport of this orchestra with its conductor, who has led the Cleveland for the past 12 years, is greatly rewarding to hear and to see.
There were many memorable moments in the Don Juan performance, in particular, the two love themes, the first introduced by the solo violin, the second played by the oboe. Those two themes, like Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet love theme, have been seducing concertgoers ever since they were premiered and will continue to do so for countless generations to come. As for the climatic moment when the Cleveland’s four French horns in unison played the recurring Don Juan leitmotif, one would have to have been moribund not to be stirred, particularly with that theme played in such fine intonation.
As many times as we may have heard Don Juan, the ending still surprises. Like a candle flame being extinguished, the music suddenly disappears. At the Friday evening performance, the audience waited a full five seconds after Welser-Möst had given the last beat before applauding, not sure whether the piece had really ended.
Following Don Juan, a very different kind of music by Richard Strauss was heard, six orchestral songs, in a performance by the evening’s soloist, Simon Keenlyside. The much-acclaimed British baritone is best known for his starring roles with many of the world’s great opera companies. Considering that he is only 46, the number of different roles that he has sung is astounding; from Don Giovanni to Wozzeck, from Pelleas to Billy Budd. He is also active as a concert baritone and orchestral soloist and has appeared frequently with the Cleveland Orchestra.
Only two of the six songs in Keenlyside’s selection were originally composed for orchestra; all but one of the other four were orchestrated by Strauss. The songs are steeped in the traditions of late romantic German lieder, a genre that the baritone loves. He performed the songs with great nuance, never allowing their sentimental character to become overburdened. One questions, though, whether this selection of songs, most of them originally composed for voice and piano, are effective as an orchestral concert set. There is not much variety from one song to the next, and perhaps they are heard to best advantage in their original form and in an intimate setting.
For those of us who know the singer either from past performances or from his recordings, his voice in the Friday evening performance did not seem to be in top form. The higher range of his voice, so memorable for its rich, rounded sound and unforced quality, seemed tight; and his very lowest notes often lost pitch definition. Even if not in top form, Keenlyside’s vocal instrument would still be the envy of many baritones; and there were wonderful moments in his Strauss performance, notably in the most familiar song of the group, Morgen. He handles German as though it were his native language. Welser-Möst’s role as an accompanist was flawless, as one would expect of a conductor who has spent much of his career in the opera house.
The audience gave Keenlyside a standing ovation following Pilgers Morgenlied, the one song that rises to heroic proportions. One hopes that there will be a return engagement of Keenlyside with the Cleveland, and when that happens this listener would look forward to his performing Brahms or Mahler, or perhaps Vaughan Williams or Benjamin Britten – music that would exploit his remarkable voice to greater advantage than the somewhat limited set of Strauss songs.
Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien was a theatrical work for chorus, vocal soloists, ballet, speakers and orchestra based on a play by the early 20th-century mystic poet Gabriele d’Annunzio. The play depicts episodes in the life of St. Sebastian, a Christian who displeases the Roman Emperor Diocletian and is ordered to be tied to a tree and shot by all of the archers in the palace guard. In countless Renaissance paintings of St. Sebastian, he is shown half-naked with dozens of arrows piercing his body.
Debussy was commissioned to compose the music for the production. The 1911 premiere was five hours long. The work was subsequently abridged, but that version was also unsuccessful. About all that has survived of the original production is a four-movement suite that Debussy extracted from the original score, published as Symphonic Fragments from Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien. For most of the audience, this listener included, it was the first time we had ever heard Debussy’s Le Martyre in a live performance.
In spite of the brutality of the legend, Debussy’s music is never violent. It is often still and muted, mysterious and elusive. One hears in the music the grayness of Nuages and the languor of L’Apres-midi, but one also hears, particularly in the second movement, Danse exotique, a kind of mystical ecstasy that is unique to this work. Debussy’s orchestra for Le Martyre is a massive one, yet the music never sounded massive.
Welser-Möst kept much of the score within a range of piano dynamics, so that when a climactic moment was called for, it was a restrained one, rarely rising above a mezzo forte. The effect of this sound world, so different from the brilliant one of Strauss’ Don Juan and of the Stravinsky Rite that followed, was startling. It was a tour de force of a different kind, and one has the greatest admiration in the way Welser-Möst and his orchestra were able to achieve it. One hopes that Le Martyre will become a staple in the Cleveland’s repertoire so that we may get to know it as well as we know La Mer.
Last year, the musical world commemorated the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in Paris a century ago. South Florida has taken part in this commemoration twice; a performance by the New World Symphony in Miami last spring and an unusual performance of the Rite for two pianos and percussion last November at Broward Community College. Technically speaking, the performance of the Rite by the Clevelanders was 31 days late, but I’m sure no one is complaining.
It is virtually unprecedented that a work of music has had a worldwide centennial commemorating its premiere. No other work, though, so profoundly changed the course of music as the Rite. It was the pioneering work that made it necessary for conductors to learn new ways to beat time and for instrumentalists to learn new techniques to play their parts. The long shadow of the Rite, however, most affected composers. Few composers born after the premiere of the work in 1913 have not been influenced by the Rite’s radical rhythmic, harmonic and orchestral innovations.
The opening bars of the Rite are for a solo bassoon in its highest register, and with most bassoonists the tone is tight and somewhat strained. That was not so with the principal bassoonist of the Cleveland, John Clouser, whose instrument sounded as open and resonant as a Stradivarius. The wonderful music following the solo, full of buzzing wind figures, has been described by Stravinsky as the first awakenings of spring after the long frozen winter on the Russian steppes.
Welser-Möst kept this section from becoming too excited or noisy, thus giving the explosive movement that follows greater contrast. In that movement, the Dance of the Adolescent Maidens, he kept the tempo moving and had the strings playing their repeated chords, the famous “Rite chords,” with a lighter, springier articulation than one usually hears. As a result, the recurring offbeat accents were more effective in driving the music forward. Often, this movement can sound like a 20-ton locomotive chugging away.
I don’t think, though, that the slightly quicker tempo that Welser-Möst took for Spring Rounds suited that movement. This is one of the few movements in the Rite where strings have the central role. Massed string chords in parallel motion intone the somber Russian folksong that recurs throughout the Rite, building the movement to a searing climax. Holding back the chords, the usual interpretation, rather than pushing them forward, gives that movement an intensity that one missed.
The final movement, the Sacrificial Dance, is the tour de force of the Rite, with its highly dissonant chords moving in rapid-fire irregular rhythms. The difficulties in conducting such fast irregular rhythms are formidable, but watching Welser-Möst conduct these passages with short, tightly controlled baton movements made it look as effortless for him as if he were conducting a Johann Strauss polka.
The orchestra gave the work a bravura performance — clean, precise and powerful. In the Rite, as in Don Juan, every member of the orchestra is called on to be a virtuoso, and it sounded as though every member of the orchestra lived up to that calling. The last page of the Rite is the climax of the ballet. It is where the sacrificial maiden, “the chosen one,” dances herself to death. At the fortissismo brass and percussion chord that ends the work, the audience rose with a roaring ovation.
From the fights and catcalls at its premiere to this ovation a century later, one coming from a relatively conservative audience, the Rite has had an incredible journey. It is amazing how fresh and powerful the work still sounds a century later. Even for those of us who think we know the work well, there are always new things to discover, particularly after such an illuminating performance.
Those who came early to this concert got a bonus; 11 of the orchestra’s players presented a short chamber music recital. It was an all-French program, quite as imaginatively chosen as the orchestral program that followed: Fauré’s lovely Piano Quartet, Henri Tomasi’s audacious Cinq Danses Profanes et Sacrées and Debussy’s idyllic Rhapsodie for clarinet and piano. Space does not permit a a review of the entire recital, but one must mention the ravishing performance of the orchestra’s assistant principal clarinetist, Daniel McKelway, in the Debussy Rhapsodie.
As one heard the level of musicianship and the technical prowess of all 11 of these pre-concert players, one better understood why the Cleveland has become one of America’s greatest orchestras.
Donald Waxman is a composer and contributor to Palm Beach ArtsPaper.