of the Cleveland Orchestra's currrent European tour of Vienna, Budapest, Frankfort, Luxembourg and Cologne
An extraordinary Stroke of Luck
The Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst at the Old Opera
Axel Zibulski
''Wiesbadener Kurier’’, October 25, 2005
Alban Berg heard “death marching on” in the first movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. The conductor Willem Mengelberg said of the last movement, the broadly sprawling Adagio: “Mahler’s soul sings farewell.” The composer himself quoted in the work from his own ‘’Songs on the Death of Children’’. Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra have included this farewell symphony in the program of their European tour. One might almost call this choice a courageous one, in the light of the increasingly conventional programming that has become a trend for touring orchestras. For the audience at the Old Opera in Frankfurt, the performance of this evening-filling late work by Mahler represented nothing less but an extraordinary stroke of luck.
Under Welser-Möst’s direction, Death by no means marches with a clattering rattle. We have certainly heard the opening harp solo played with sharper contours, and the later return of the same theme on the kettledrums has also been more vivid and dramatic on other occasions. Welser-Möst, who was born in Linz in 1960 and has been the music director of The Cleveland Orchestra for three years, has his musicians play with an almost “friendly” sound, even in the third-movement Burlesque, which is really a rather crude affair. Yet it is precisely through this approach that the orchestra can display its strengths most convincingly: the winds sound wonderfully soft and warm, for example in the sensitively shaped flute solo of the first movement or the beautifully rounded playing of the excellent first hornist.
At the same time, this doesn’t make Welser-Möst’s interpretation flat in the least, and although the second-movement Ländler doesn’t come off quite as “clumsy and very coarse” as Mahler had demanded, yet in its own gentle way, it had such a strong rhythmic definition and was shaped so transparently that one didn’t miss any overly harsh and crude effects. The farewell song of the strings in the final Adagio, in any case, seemed absolutely unsurpassable in its wonderful flexibility of sound, from the full-bodied forte climaxes all the way to the quadruple pianos at the end, played with such concentration and precision in the highest register. This concert by The Cleveland Orchestra was a feast of sound, and an early high point of the Frankfurt concert season.
-- Translation by Peter Laki
A Site of Devastation, in Perfect Shape
The Lips of This Music Don't Twitch in Pain:
Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra in Mahler's Ninth Symphony at Frankfurt's Old Opera House
Wolfgang Sandner
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 25, 2005
There are certainly lighter pieces of luggage an orchestra can take on tour than, of all things, Gustav Mahler's monumental Ninth Symphony, each of whose four movements is in a different key. This work, born of intense pain, does not begin with a stroke of the kettledrum and does not end with a breath-taking stretta that prepares the way for a rousing encore to have the audience dance all the way home. From the motivic fragments of the first six bars, widely scattered like ancient ruins in some acoustic Forum Romanum, to the last movement which literally dies away in the muted open fifths of the cellos in triple pianissimo, there is not a single moment in the work's 90-minute span that would grant a moment of emotional respite or a digression in thought—not for the audience and certainly not for the musicians.
The enigma of the dissolution of form, the frequent ambivalence of melodies receding into the background and accompanying voices in prominent positions, the coarse tone called for in some moments, the sharp contrasts throughout, and the need to keep the tension from slackening – all these problems amount to a mountain that, however, is nothing compared to the Massif Central represented by the intellectual coming-to-grips with Mahler's immense spiritual legacy. Commentators have always been inspired to exegeses along almost cosmological lines. Schoenberg went as far as calling the work the product of a supernatural mind, with the composer being merely an executive agent. Some have asked the question—not without relevance for the interpretation of the work—whether the symphony represents the end of an era or the beginning of a new one. Others have sunk into deep reflection over the question as to whether the artist was contemplating the Beyond at the end of his all-too-brief life, to produce such combinations of sound and such streams of musical consciousness. Of course, the poets disguised as cultural critics did not stay away from Mahler's Ninth, which worked perfectly with the creation of a series of musical myths, along with the corresponding works by Beethoven and Bruckner. Said Adorno: the lips of this music twitch with pain. On their European tour which began in Luxembourg and continued at Frankfurt's Old Opera House, the Cleveland Orchestra and its music director Franz Welser-Möst presented Mahler's Ninth as the main work on their program, without batting an eye and, if one may say so, without any twitching of the lips. It was a demonstration of musical ability at the highest level, which will hardly come as a surprise. After all, Welser-Möst, a native of Linz, must be familiar with symphonic boa constrictors, and the American elite orchestra, which apparently has to fear only four competitors in its own country and possibly only two in Europe, has recently immersed itself in the complete works of Mahler under Welser-Möst's predecessor, Christoph von Dohnányi.
It will hardly take anything away from Welser-Möst, who conducted with a precise beat and intense musical feeling, to say that we felt something of Dohnányi's consummate control in this performance. The tricky opening of the symphony, with those motivic particles out of which grows a whole half-hour movement, seemed to follow and even to intensify Dohnányi's view according to which the conductor's beat has to become unnecessary. In any case, the way the conductor unwaveringly yet unobtrusively maintained the pulse while at the same time phrasing the music with great agogic liberty bordered on a stroke of genius. One could cite the unity of the bowings, the seemingly indivisible ensemble work and above all the refinement of the string pianissimos in the final Adagio (which is also nearly half an hour long), to convince all musical agnostics that heavenly sound still depends on a flawless musical performance. The agnostics could of course assert that this begs an important artistic question, namely how such a flawless musical performance is achieved. That remains a secret of the artists.
It was only one of the merits of this astounding concert – and certainly not the least important one – to have inspired such questions once again. Under these circumstances, it might seem inappropriate to quibble about missing the crudeness of the Ländler or the ferocity of the Rondo. The Cleveland musicians and their Austrian conductor seemed a bit too serene and too detached, focusing entirely on the structure. But maybe it is not fitting to ask perfect musicians to render the imperfect gestures in a score to which the composer himself was unable to put the finishing touch.
-- Translation by Peter Laki
They Said Farewell, Enraptured
The Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst Plays Mahler's Ninth at the Old Opera
(jö)
Frankfurter Neue Presse, October 25, 2005
A great concert, perfect playing—so perfect one caught oneself hoping for a single flawed moment. But this wonderful orchestra, led by its conductor with clear gestures and precise directions, never flagged either in its effortless responses, its meticulously calibrated surges or subsidings, in the glitter of its instrumental array or in the disembodied sound of the finale. It seems that only a handful of orchestras can play such an enraptured yet never sentimental farewell to the world.
Welser-Möst takes the dissolution of symphonic structure seriously and doesn't look for "connections." Yet he succeeds brilliantly in not isolating the parts that seem disparate. He brings out the multiplicity of voices with fantastic clarity; the instrumental colors ensure the "melodic" quality (with a "cool" timbre). The music sings, erupts, and can even be furious, as in the highly virtuosic Burleske.
All the while, the flow of the music is never impeded, the tempos are calm (except, of course, in the Rondo) yet not dragging. The inner tensions are reminiscent of Bruno Walter's recording. The finale took our breath away. In fact, the house has rarely been so quiet and so free from coughs.
Except for the loud ovations and bravo calls at the end.
-- Translation by Peter Laki
The Aristocrats of Sound
In a Class All by Themselves: The Cleveland Orchestra at the Old Opera House
Tim Gorbauch
Frankfurter Rundschau, October 25, 2005
Of all the American orchestras, the Cleveland is the most classical, the most aristrocratic, the most European. George Szell led it for 25 years and sealed its reputation with these striking words: "We begin to rehearse where others leave off."
After Szell, it was Lorin Maazel, then Christoph von Dohnányi and now, Franz Welser-Möst from Austria. He, too, is a man of controlled objectivity. He, too, is a workaholic. He, too, is obsessed with sound. To hear Mahler's Ninth Symphony played so perfectly, with such fanatic precision and so far above criticism was as breathtaking as it was rare. The performance of The Cleveland Orchestra at the Old Opera made it clear that the Americans are among the best in the world.
Yet this late work by Mahler is among the trickiest ever written. The sound often becomes extremely thin—only a small thread connects it to the world of which it speaks. At the end, in the final Adagio, which says farewell extremely slowly and with infinite patience, Welser-Möst in fact had the orchestra play as softly as possible. And suddenly all coughing stops at the Old Opera, there is nothing but radiant silence. Long after the last note has sounded, Welser-Möst is still standing there with his hands raised and his body stretched, listening to the music as it reverberates in the void.
Try to imitate such tension long past the final sound. Yet as conductors go, Welser-Möst is almost too restrained, almost too sober. He is only marginally interested in the narrative, literary quality that is so characteristic of Mahler's sound. Instead, he approaches the score analytically, as an extremely differentiated auditory event that he unfolds before our ears with an almost encyclopedic comprehensiveness.
That might not be enough in the long run, but anyone who has such an orchestra at their disposal need not fear any criticism.
-- Translation by Peter Laki
Farewell to the World
Grandiose: Gustav Mahler's Ninth with The Cleveland Orchestra in Luxembourg
Trierischer Volkfreund
Martin Möller, Luxembourg
An American orchestra that reached world-class status through iron discipline years ago, plays Mahler at the Luxembourg Philharmonie. Strict, coldly structured, unrelentingly hard? Conductor Franz Welser-Möst confounds such cliché'd expectations.
The opening is restrained; it even comes across as indecisive and almost casual. Yet that is not a flaw but a concept. In the opening measures of Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony, the motives are interlocked as in a puzzle; and Franz Welser-Möst seeks a cautious, tentative approach and builds up to the first climax with great care and without any demonstrative theatricality. Even though the orchestra is large – 18 first violins, 9 double basses – the music director of The Cleveland Orchestra doesn't resort to [superficial] orchestral effects or crystal-clear structuring [alone]; he lets melodic lines breathe, smooths out the sharp contrasts in tempo and dynamics, and translates expressive markings such as "extreme force" or "with great power" into a milder style. Thus, Mahler becomes the "master of the smallest transition."* There is a certain Austrian coziness to the interpretation, a mixture of friendliness with a strong expressive intent.
Transparent and organic
The conductor leaves room for moments of deep rest in the first movement; he lets the music breathe and, in the second movement, makes the sound unfold in layers. Transparent and organic at the same time, it gives the Rondo-Burleske not so much the defiance Mahler had prescribed but rather an almost pointillistic richness of colors, which takes its full effect thanks to the warm and transparent acoustics of the Luxemburg Philharmonie. This wonderful American orchestra, especially the magnificent horn section, reacts with uncommon flexibility; the colors are radiant and the lines breathe.
The high point of the concert came at the very end, at the conclusion of a finale played with exquisite sensitivity and a great tone free from all clumsiness and thickening. The sound faded out in an "Adagissimo" that was unsurpassable in its tenseness. Welser-Möst reduced the tempo to the limits of what's possible. Yet the section did not fall apart. And the strings led the music with peerless depth of expression and soft intensity to the shadow-like final accord that just "dies away." What a moving farewell to the world!
The "Chamber Symphony No.2" [sic], written by British composer Thomas Adès in 1990, opened the concert like a carefully formulated preface to the Mahler. Adès has transposed certain elements of Mahler's musical idiom into the late 20th century. He has retraced the same connecting and disconnecting of motives that make Mahler's Ninth so forceful—with a much smaller orchestral complement and with much more modern harmonies, bordering on the atonal. Adès has found some Mahlerian color combinations in his woodwind writing and develops a broad stylistic spectrum between the romanticism of "horn fifths" and rhythms derived from jazz. The work contains great diversity; it is rich in content, carefully written and brilliantly orchestrated.
*Allusion to the title of Adorno's book on Alban Berg. – P.L.
Traversing All Paradise
The Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst Thrill the Audience with Adès and Mahler at the Cologne Philharmonie
Gerhard Bauer
Kölner Stadt Anzeiger, October 26, 2005
English composer Thomas Adès (b. 1971) wrote his "Chamber Symphony for 15 instrumentalists" in 1990; this work made him instantly famous. He was called the "child prodigy of the British music scene," and since he knows how to handle age-old musical material in a virtuosic way, he is particularly suited to being everybody's darling. Works such as Living Toys, Asyla, Powder Her Face, and America: A Prophecy, have further increased his popularity by their brilliance and accessibility. The present Chamber Symphony, too, has many exciting moments and surprising turns. This short work, in four brief movements, is a colorful study in sound by an imaginative designer who gives his players plenty of opportunity to display their talents in all their different facets.
When those players come from the ranks of The Cleveland Orchestra, everything in the hall sparkles and glitters and shines. This luxury ensemble from America, one of the Big Five, calmly and cheerfully met all the challenges Adès had posed (for instance, the pianist must also [know how to] play the accordion). After such a preparation, one looked forward to the main work on the program – Mahler's Ninth Symphony -- with rare curiosity. And in the next eighty minutes, one in fact traversed and inhabited all of Paradise at the Cologne Philharmonie.
The Cleveland Orchestra is known for standing the closer to the European sound ideal than any other American group. No cold super-technicians and precision machines, these players are the exponents of a warm and darkly luminous sound color; they are masters of the Mahlerian fullness that demands a "big tone" and the "broadest strokes." And since the Clevelanders are also capable of, and prepared for, the instrospection that lurks behind the work -- the last 27 measures, which make the music to fade out and die away, turned into an event beyond imagination.
It was the Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Möst, born in 1960 and music director in Cleveland since 2002, who had managed to make infinity audible in this way. In his conducting, intuition, inspiration and intellect interpenetrate for the benefit of the work as a whole. Welser-Möst's concept of Mahler seems committed to an ideal that sees the composer as the witness of a vanishing culture. In the Ninth even more than elsewhere, Mahler has always been viewed as wavering between late romanticism and early modernity. With Welser-Möst, everything is memory, reminiscence and a sounding evocation of the aura of the Danube Monarchy.
Nothing was really "modern" about this work at the time it was written (1909), except for the encapsulated motives, the great surges and nihilistic islands in the first movement. The "cheeky and clumsy" Ländler, the "defiant" Burlesque, the conclusion—all this is pure nostalgia, even if interspersed with climactic moments. There was great enthusiasm at the Cologne Philharmonie, and only one thing was incomprehensible: there were some empty seats left.
Thunderous Ovations for The Cleveland Orchestra
Mahler and Messiaen under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst
Loll Weber, ‚'Luxemburger Wort'', Oct. 26, 2005
Thunderous ovations greeted both concerts of The Cleveland Orchestra under their music director Franz Welser-Möst at the Philharmonie.
The reputations of this top American orchestra and its celebrated conductor are so well established that even an unusual and uncomfortable program – with Thomas Adès's Chamber Symphony, Mahler's Ninth and Messiaen's Turangalila – turned out to be entirely risk-free. The first night was completely sold out and there were only a few empty seats at the Messiaen. It speaks well for the openness of audiences in the region.
To be sure, the opening work of the first evening was not exactly a revelation. The soloistic Chamber Symphony, No.2 by the Englishman Thomas Adès (the director of the Aldeburgh Festival, born in 1937 [sic]) received a routine reading, precise but sober. The nicely modern short work came across as a rather paltry affair in which one could scarcely notice any signs of a personal musical idiom. After just 18 minutes (!) of a musical "decomposition" of little consequence, we were released for an intermission. Then came Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony, with the full forces of The Cleveland Orchestra! Following an American tradition, Welser-Möst dispensed with any stage risers. The entire orchestra played on a single plane, which benefited the balance in this hall, with the winds being less pronounced.
Beyond Time and Space
The sound was not entirely transparent all the time, but it was well-balanced, well-rounded and extremely refined. When was the last time we heard such silent pianissimo passages in a concert hall, literally taking the listener's breath away? These are the technical qualities that have ensured the orchestra's significance and the international reputation. We experienced a Mahler performance at the highest level. One cannot imagine the silence of the final measures, where all life dissolves into the metaphysical eternal rest beyond time and space, to be rendered more impressively. Too bad that this heart-rending atmosphere of leave-taking was disturbed by a few coughs; these noises could have been easily suppressed with a handkerchief! Franz Welser-Möst shaped the sound processes in a somewhat cool way, entirely within the orchestra's George Szell tradition; yet everything was completely functional and worked out into the smallest details.
Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony
The Magnificence of Beings
The next day, we heard a superb rendition – not to say a spellbinding one – of Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony, a work that, in Antoine Goléa's words, "speaks of the magnificence of human beings, enkindled and entwined by love." For a guide to this fresco in sound, we recommend the composer's own introduction, as well as Harry Halbreich's equally detailed commentary. There are two possible approaches to the realization of these ten movements, organized in a repetitive fashion around four cyclic themes and three complex rhythmic cells. One is essentially symphonic, the other more soloistic, with the piano and the ondes martenot adding a virtuosic complement to the orchestral forces. Franz Welser-Möst chose the second concept. Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, with an astonishing verve and artistic presence, threw himself into the work with his usual energy and perfect mastery of the score. The conductor, less academic and more communicative than the night before, managed to animate his large ensemble (Messiaen required 103 musicians) to give a sparkling performance, full of nuance, ever-changing colors and instrumental gusto.
In this exuberant "song of love, hymn to joy, to time, movement, rhythm, life, and death" (the words are the composer's) the audience experienced an exceptional encounter with Messiaen, and The Cleveland Orchestra was confirmed as one of the most prestigious symphonic ensembles in the world.
-- Translation by Peter Laki
A River of Tears Turned into Music
Fritz Herzog General-Anzeiger, Oct 27, 2005
CONCERT. The Cleveland Orchestra is one of America's Big Five. They begin their two-day visit in Cologne with Mahler and Adès, under their Austrian music director Franz Welser-Möst.
When you see him in front of his musicians, all serious and without the slightest affectation, slender and with rimless glasses, you might think he is the reincarnation of Gustav Mahler. Franz Welser-Möst, music director of The Cleveland Orchestra since 2002 and probably until 2012, has developed a unique and highly productive collaboration with the musicians from the American state of Ohio, as the successor of Christoph von Dohnányi who is not entirely unknown in Cologne.
The program of the first of two concerts in the Cologne Philharmonie began with Thomas Adès's 1990 Chamber Symphony for 15 instrumentalists, Op.2. It is a work of approximately 15 minutes' duration, which is as indebted to the blue note as it is to Beethoven's Leonore Overture No.3 and follows in Schoenberg's chamber music tradition. This becomes apparent especially when Adès tries to reflect the sound spectrum of the basset horn in the orchestra (including a partially prepared piano and an accordion).
Welser-Möst juxtaposed this work with Gustav Mahler's monumental Ninth Symphony, which doesn't exactly belong to the staples of the repertoire—a work that amounts to an artistic testament and has been influential throughout the 20th century. The composer, "lost to the world" and finding salvation only through his art, traverses the field between life and death, charged with the special tension of the fin desiècle, one final time. This last symphony is a river of tears turned into music, a leave-taking before the departure into another world.
Welser-Möst, a Kapellmeister in the best sense of the word and comparable, perhaps, to a Günter Wand, analyzes the complex musical text against the background of Mahler's artistic makeup. The picture thus emerging is of breath-taking intensity. The successive waves of defiant upsurges yield in the final Adagio to a final expiration, a peaceful letting-go of a completely outdated aesthetic.
Credit for such intensity must go, in addition to Welser-Möst's compelling interpretation, to an orchestra whose sumptuous forces, from strings to woodwind, brass and percussion, are united by an extremely precise and clean intonation. They are able to illuminate this score effortlessly even in a quadruple piano, barely audible and yet carrying in the hall. Not even the slightest detail gets lost, thanks (in addition to an eminently chamber-music-like approach) to the cleanly differentiated seating with cellos in the middle and violas to the right. The audience in the not completely sold-out Philharmonie greeted this exemplary Mahler exegesis with euphoric applause.
The Blessed Moment Came Late
The Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst in Cologne
Volker Fries
Kölnische Rundschau, October 27, 2005
Leonard Bernstein called the last page of the score of Mahler's Ninth Symphony "the closest a work of art has ever come to the experience of dying." Under its music director Franz Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra – one of the American "Big Five" – has come respectably close to this wrenching monument of "letting everything go." Certainly, Mahler's last completed symphony is one of those works that admit of no companion on a concert program—and not only because of its enormous size. It is also that the message is far too overwhelming, the inner conflicts too disturbing.
It is not known what got into the organizers when they put on a fifteen-minute work by a nineteen-year-old composer to precede this epochal masterpiece. The Chamber Symphony for 15 instrumentalists, op.2, by Englishman Thomas Adès (written in 1990) gave the eminent woodwind and brass players, above all, an early chance to shine. The two percussionists and the pianist also had some effective moments. It was an ambitious product by a highly gifted youngster, skilful in the choice of technical means, bristling with reasonably original ideas.
It was not a bad idea to have an intermission after only fifteen minutes, yet even so, the stuff was entirely unsuited to prepare one for the Mahler symphony. No wonder that the first movement did not quite have the required solemnity. The particles of the score, its magical intervals, its harp sounds, the tremolos of the strings, they all were transparent, yet everything was a touch too detached.
Welser-Möst, who warmed up only gradually in the course of the work, emphasized well-balanced developments and an iron-clad grandeur in the swelling crescendos, yet too much introspection or ecstatic eruptions in the string sound, once Bernstein's trademark, are not really for him. The "Ländler-waltz" movement was very pleasant; the burlesque third was grandiose—a head-over-heels "trip to hell." It was only in the last movement, where nothing but cool silence is left over (Mahler's instruction says "dying away"), that Welser-Möst and his world-class ensemble finally had their late blessed moment.
You've Just Got to Love That Overture
Cleveland Orchestra under Welser-Möst at the Philharmonie
Christoph Zimmermann[‚] General-Anzeiger, October 28, 2005
Even though they did not put their commitment to contemporary music ostentatiously on display, one could still hear something new during the two-day visit to Cologne of The Cleveland Orchestra. Of course, the novelties were of different stripes: on Tuesday, the Chamber Symphony Op.2 by Thomas Adès; on Wednesday, the Symphony No.2 by Charles Ives. Of the works of this unorthodox American, one only hears the mysterious Unanswered Question with any frequency. This symphony, written when Ives was not yet thirty, creates a more playful atmosphere. The Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst played it with a great deal of refinement and with some authenticity.
The Academic Festival Overture made a fitting opening for the concert. This pièce d'occasion written for the University of Breslau quotes extensively from student songs. Yet the work is no cheap medley but rather an artfully happy opus, time and again darkened by shadows in the minor mode. You've just got to love this overture, mainly when it is played so full of art and zest as it was by these American musicians.
The serious Brahms – the real Brahms – finally received his due with the First Symphony. We know how much trouble Brahms had in attacking this genre in the giant shadow of Beethoven. Yet even if Brahms had only written the finale, with its overwhelming romantic flair, we would have to sink to our knees before him. The introductory timpani strokes could well inspire excessive theatricality, as in the recordings of Furtwängler, Klemperer or Celibidache. There was no lack of energy in Welser-Möst's reading, yet his flowing tempos made clear right at the outset that he was not interested in evoking the titans. The chorale quote near the end, with no slowing down in the tempo, confirmed this concept.
‘’’Out Into the Distance’’’[‘] ‘’’The Second Night of The Cleveland Orchestra’’’[‘] ‘’’The master ensemble excels in Brahms’’’[‘] '’’Stefan Rütter’’’[‚] '’’’’Kölner Stadtanzeiger’’, October 28, 2005’’’
He is a maestro who doesn’t want to be one. Franz Welser-Möst is a rare conductor who is not into power or posturing, one who doesn’t want to be a disciplinarian with a baton in his hand. Which would be wholly unnecessary given the artistic level of The Cleveland Orchestra, where he is in his fourth season as music director. The organization Köln Musik? had put on a youth project in Cologne schools flanking the second concert of the elite orchestra from America. Thus the dignified and well-dressed concert audience mingled with groups of casually clad newcomers to the classics, who expressed their enthusiasm in ways more exuberant than the well-behaved interaction of insides of their hands.
Charles Ives’s Second Symphony was the best musical nourishment for this mixed audience: it combines old-time counterpoint, romantic euphony and earthy humor in a disarmingly casual way. It appeals to the reactionary as well as to the rebel, yet manages to unsettle both at the same time. Welser-Möst and his musicians moved in the thicket of quotations and imitations with great assurance and naturalness. Yet one should beware of this piece when it is played less brilliantly and luxuriously than it was by the Americans: it has longueurs, dangerous longueurs.
Brahms’s ‘’Academic Festival Overture’’ also depends on quotations, imposing a stable symphonic form on a series of popular student songs. Here Welser-Möst affixed his artistic signature at the very beginning of the evening: we heard some fluid, elegant and spirited music-making that kept pathos and heaviness at bay. The same was true to an even larger extent for the gloriously presented final work on the program, Brahms’s First Symphony (which had itself appeared in Charles Ives’s treasure house of quotes).
The orchestral playing was simply enchanting: it was luminous and sensual, and had an impressive physical plasticity. Even the smallest orchestral detail found its place and its significance in the seamless tutti sound. The crescendos never pushed the limits; each surge opened up the sound to even greater distances and greater transparency. How great the temptation must have been to exploit the orchestra’s enormous potential to the hilt! Yet Welser-Möst always held back; even the final chorale-apotheosis was not turned into a spectacle. One might regret this, but instead, the music preserved something that it often loses, namely room for the imagination and air to breathe. (:divend:)