Cleveland Orchestra @ Severance Hall 2/11/10

The Cleveland Orchestra, with Pierre Boulez conducting, presented an all-Mahler program perfect for a dreary mid-February evening. The composer's often tender and (alas) often gloomy musical view of life twisted feelings from a wild appreciation of life to a despair that anything will ever improve (the effect is sort of like being plunged into the teen years over and over). Ahem.

However, the Adagio from Symphony No. 10 and the marvelous songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn ("Youth's Magic Horn") were glorious and worth the resultant pangs of angst. Magdalena Kozena and Christian Gerhaher alternated singing the twelve songs. Baritone Gerhaher's voice sometimes failed to carry over the orchestra, but Kozena's vibrant mezzo-soprano soared.

Most touching, its tragic meaning conveyed as much through music as words, was her version of "Where the Fine Trumpets Sound." I intended to write (and rave) about this program the minute I got home. Alas, I did not, but it's not too late for us both to enjoy it at a later date.

WCLV (104.9) will air it Sun 4/4 at 4PM. In addition, as the thicket of recording equipment above the stage and cameras on the stage testified, the program was being recorded for a future television broadcast (somewhere, sometime, the program didn't say).

Laura Kennelly is a freelance arts journalist, a member of the Music Critics Association of North America, and an associate editor of BACH, a scholarly journal devoted to J. S. Bach and his circle.

Listening to and learning more about music has been a life-long passion. She knows there’s no better place to do that than the Cleveland area.