Cleveland Orchestra feat. Lang Lang @ Severance Hall 10/9 The sold-out audience clearly came to see and hear Lang Lang, the superstar pianist who wowed the world at the Beijing Olympics, and they were not one teensy bit disappointed. Oh, no! For the first time that I can recall, the members of the audience were so eager to shout and clap and jump to their feet they didn't even wait for the final notes of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 to be played before starting the immediate standing ovation. Of course, Mr. Lang was entirely deserving of the accolade, as was the orchestra and its conductor, Franz Welser-Möst. It was an electric and sometimes transcendent performance.

Mr. Lang might well have been channeling Chopin, so effortlessly did he demonstrate his mastery of the notes, while providing emotion, crisp articulation, a wide range of dynamics, and graceful, poetic strength. The second movement Romanze seemed to just drift out of the piano to float up near the ceiling of Severance Hall, so transparent and wispy it could not be captured. The ending of that movement was as beautiful as anything I’ve ever heard, and I discovered tears making their way down my face.

Mr. Welser-Möst was an exceedingly attentive collaborator, keeping the ensemble together throughout the somewhat elastic rhythms of the soloist, especially in the middle movement. Assistant Principal Bassoonist Barrick Stees contributed two gorgeous obligato passages—the first dreamy and the second lyrical—in duet format with the solo piano.

Opening the program was a small suite of orchestral paintings as drawn by Jacques Ibert. As a fairly young composer, he was awarded the Prix de Roma and in addition to his studies there, he availed himself of the opportunities afforded by the traveling to get there and back home again. Escales are musical portraits of Palermo, Tunis-Nefta and Valencia.

The picture of Palermo started before dawn with the soft songs of birds awakening, as played by the flute, and then progressed to a very noisy afternoon, perhaps at a marketplace or village square. Tunis-Nefta is all exotic, taking place in a desert, featuring off-beat rhythms balancing a somewhat oriental sounding oboe solo, gorgeously played by principal oboe Frank Rosenwein. Valencia moved on to Spain, with the sounds of fiesta, castanets and images of swirling dancers.

The most well-known classical work in the repertoire—Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 took off at such a fast pace I worried that the piece would disintegrate from sheer centrifugal force. I shouldn’t have worried. I daresay this orchestra can handle anything! Still, the all-out sprint was breath-taking and impressive at the hands of Mr. Welser-Möst. It was dynamic and dramatic. The principal winds: Richard King, horn; Franklin Cohen, clarinet; John Clouser, bassoon; Joshua Smith, flute and assistant principal oboe Jeffrey Rathbun were nothing less than fantastic throughout all four movements. It was almost a concertante for winds in places, especially near the end of the second movement when they played tag in sprightly octaves. The basses were especially sturdy in the andante, becoming exceedinly nimble in the scherzo.

In the finale, the rebel (dare I say ‘maverick’?) Beethoven comes to the fore when he employs for the first time a trombone, a piccolo and a contra-bassoon in a symphony. How revolutionary! And now we can’t imagine a symphony being performed in any other way. This one ended in a magnificent blaze of dramatic glory and a second very enthusiastic standing ovation! Major kudos to everyone involved!

There are no regular subscription concerts scheduled for this week, although there are Family concerts featuring the music of Scheherazade! on Saturday at 11 am and 1:30 pm. The following week, guest conductor Nicholas McGegan returns to conduct music of Rameau, father-and-son Bachs and Handel in four concerts. For tickets or additional information, visit the website http://www.clevelandorchestra.com or call 231-1111.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Kelly Ferjutz artswriterATroadrunner.com
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