Cleveland Orchestra @ Severance Hall 12/3/09

In the last “classical” classical music concert before launching its traditional (and popular) season-ending holiday offerings, the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Ivan Fischer, offered a refreshing program of works by Carl Maria von Weber (the brisk, witty Overture to Der Freischutz), Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and Rachmaninoff’s huge Symphony No. 2.

Pianist Richard Goode gradually swept us into Beethoven’s passionate and romantic symphony. Goode, who sings to himself as he plays (only the first rows can hear it clearly), took the time to bring out not just the agitated, but the lyric in this piano/orchestra duet. Conductor Fischer showed impressive energy as he led the richly embellished (and hour- long) Rachmaninoff symphony (at one point both feet were off the podium as he cued the orchestra in one of many contrapuntal passages).

Passages from this great work must have subsequently inspired Hollywood film composers because it’s easy to catch a phrase here, a note there that “sounds just like movie music.” It was a great escape from holiday hurly-burly.

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.