United States Mozart, Staud, Tchaikovsky: Christoph Sietzen (percussion), Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst (conductor). Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, Cleveland, 6.10.2023. (MSJ)
Mozart – Symphony No.29 in A major, K.201
Johannes Maria Staud – Whereas the reality trembles
Tchaikovsky – Symphony No.2 in C minor, Op.17, ‘Ukrainian’
The Cleveland Orchestra and its music director, Franz Welser-Möst, have a long history of working with Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud, including recording and the release of Staud’s symphonic psychological thriller Stromab in 2018. Stromab proved that Staud has a keen ear for atmospheric sonorities and a compelling touch for capturing emotional states of mind. It was a perfect idea, therefore, to match him up with the brilliant and theatrical percussion virtuoso Christoph Sietzen. The resulting premiere of Whereas the reality trembles was more than brilliant: it was intriguing, challenging and memorable.
The piece, co-commissioned with Wiener Konzerthaus and Bayerische Rundfunk Orchester, calls for a formidable array of percussion instruments for the soloist, supported and echoed by a similarly expanded percussion section in the orchestra. Almost every modern orchestral work calls for copious percussion, right? The brutal truth is that many of those pieces are instantly forgettable, but Staud’s most certainly is not. It is hardly less experimental than the other works, but the difference is that Staud has a true grasp of musical chemistry, while others master the ingredients without being able to make them spark. Staud knows how to bridge the chasm between the familiar and unfamiliar and make it feel emotionally compelling. He may strive to cut new ground in places, but he also knows the never-ending power of well-deployed stock gestures. Making such disparate elements click together is a rare gift.
The work opens with a quirky, hypnotic groove that saw the soloist playing patterns on the vibraphone and tuned cowbells, sounding like a cross between the gamelan music of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony and Frank Zappa’s ‘G-Spot Tornado’, along with some spellcasting that was wholly Staud’s own. And I use the term spellcasting after consideration, because the central role of the percussionist, combined with Sietzen’s flamboyant enthusiasm, casts him in a shamanic role in this concerto.
Taking his inspiration from a line in a William Carlos Williams poem, Whereas the reality trembles assembles a series of games that turn into powerful spells. Passages that start as just great fun morph into moments of reckoning. Kinetic riffs give way to shimmering clouds of sound made with everything from ethereal bells to the mundane clunks of ceramic flowerpots, or the harsh rasp of a steel barrel used as a kick drum. After the work reaches a transfigured calm, it embarks on an entertaining but unsettling closing section, vigorous to the point of threat. Perhaps it was satire, but it struck me as sounding like a march for toxic masculinity, mocking the jingoistic roar of martial music. Whatever the case, it was stunning, and Welser-Möst and his musicians were there with the amazing Sietzen every step of the way, even when he stepped aside to draw attention to an eloquently extended orchestra tutti passage. An amazing performance of a compelling piece, and let us hope the orchestra releases it on their in-house label.
Welser-Möst, who is entering his twenty-second year in Cleveland, was in solid form, despite recent reports of some alarming health issues on the horizon. His Mozart Symphony No.29 was alert, bright and lithe, and remarkably so considering that Welser-Möst declines to reduce string forces in the historically-informed-performance manner. Using the full strings of the orchestra, Welser-Möst was able to keep clarity in place, with more accenting and shaping than marked his Mozart in the early years of his career. While reduced forces might allow for greater flexibility, it is hard to be anything less than pleased by a performance that upheld the clarion Cleveland virtues of poise and grace.
Surprisingly, Welser-Möst did not tie the program together by emphasizing the same virtues in Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony. While known for his surface Romanticism, with a capital R, Tchaikovsky was at heart quite a classical composer, seeking poise and grace. This time, however, the conductor defied expectations by defaulting toward a beefy, Germanic approach. It is true that there is something impressive about hearing the strings dig into some of the piece’s first movement passages, but broader tempo makes the second movement march get a little soggy. The Scherzo and Finale were brisker, which helped the piece come to a satisfying conclusion. Nathaniel Silberschlag’s horn solo which opened the work was breathtaking.
All considerations made; it was a solid, traditional performance of the Tchaikovsky. But the break with tradition came with the program note by commentator Maria Sonevytsky, who explained the orchestra’s decision to change the piece’s traditional nickname. Originally known as ‘The Little Russian’ symphony because of Russia’s use of that condescending nickname for the Ukraine region, many orchestras have begun renaming it ‘Ukrainian’ to honor Tchaikovsky’s source more properly for the folk tunes used in the work.
While it is revisionist history, such adjustments are sometimes necessary, as they do reflect the world we live in. It matters what we call works, and if what we call them needs to change, the program note is certainly the place to start that discussion. In the present case, the notes turned into more of an exercise in indicting nineteenth-century Russians for cultural appropriation, later (much later) segueing into an outright commercial for Ukrainian composers. While I would be enthusiastic to hear the Cleveland Orchestra play some works by those lesser-known composers, I don’t think it is ideal for such a commercial to replace the first duty of program notes, which is to give new listeners a detailed guide to the works being heard. Perhaps the commercial and social criticism would have been better suited to a sidebar in the program.
Whatever the case, more moving than the program commentator’s hectoring was walking outside after the concert and looking back to discover Severance Music Center lit up in blue and gold in acknowledgement of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Mark Sebastian Jordan