United States Haydn, Walker, R. Schumann: Cleveland Orchestra / Daniel Harding (conductor). Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, Cleveland, 3.10.2024. (MSJ)
Haydn – Symphony No.92 in G major, ‘Oxford’
George Walker – Sinfonia No.2
R. Schumann – Symphony No.2 in C major, Op.61
English conductor Daniel Harding led a showcase of symphonies for this Cleveland Orchestra concert that included a classical work, a modern piece and a quintessential romantic symphony. It was a daunting slate, and I am pleased to report that not only did Harding throw himself enthusiastically into the works, but he also made all three flourish in different, vital ways.
The concert opened with a late Franz Josef Haydn symphony, but unlike the full string sections that Cleveland music director Franz Welser-Möst favors for classical works, the strings here were pared down, judiciously leaving enough players to make a sonorous sound yet gain the benefits of intimacy and clarity. Harding’s leadership of the serene but playful work was poised, witty and briskly energetic, highlighting the kind of details that make every Haydn symphony a rollicking delight despite its similarities to the composer’s numerous other works. Harding particularly relished the pauses Haydn distributed throughout, teasing hesitations that briefly held up the flow.
Moving from the bright colors of the Haydn to the rich but subtle palette of American composer George Walker’s Sinfonia No.2 was dramatic. Scored for an extremely full modern orchestra, Walker’s piece is typical of his late work, intense and unflinching. It sounds like the missing link between Copland’s declamatory Americana and the abstract gestural music of twentieth-century European composers like Henze. At its most imposing, it can feel a little like you are being lectured by a formidably articulate professor, but Walker’s music can also turn reflective and tender. The slow middle movement was a case in point, the majority of it filled with a searching flute solo, played here with poise and miraculous, room-filling tone by Saeran St. Christopher. The solo was occasionally counterpointed by the muted colors of sustained string chords or the pastel splash of a few notes from an acoustic guitar. The contrast with the Haydn made the Walker feel like an exploration of an alien world but, at the same time, the alternating consonant and dissonant phrases of the modern work make it a recognizable descendant of the classical piece.
Robert Schumann’s Symphony No.2 is challenging on any program, for while it is undeniably one of the highpoints of the romantic symphony literature, it is one that not many conductors can effectively fly live in concert. Why? Well, there are many reasons. One is Schumann’s infamously dense orchestration, a kind of layering of sounds that worked better on the more lightly sonorous instruments of the early 1800s than on today’s powerhouse instruments. And Schumann’s frantic virtuosity can intimidate performers into playing it safe to get through treacherous passages. Another potential problem is Schumann’s quirky way with thematic development. Instead of deploying a balance of contrasting themes like Haydn, Schumann’s Second unfolds as a symphony in search of a fulfilling melody, and it does not find it until the radiant closing pages of the finale. Most crucially of all, this piece is arguably the most personal symphonic piece written before the days of Tchaikovsky and Mahler. By his own account, Schumann wrote himself back from the brink of despair with it.
Harding handled the orchestration issues with an infinite attention to detail. Instead of letting held-out string tones clot textures, he shaped phrases to put emphasis on the important gesture of each passing moment, then had the players dovetail the ends of phrases, allowing more flecks of color to emerge from other sections. Without going to the obsessive excess that led long-ago Cleveland music director George Szell to reorchestrate Schumann, Harding maintained a restless search for ways to let Schumann’s ideas shine, including dovetailed phrases, dynamic tweaks (not radical rewrites) and ending some notes slightly early to allow more air into textures.
For the second movement Scherzo, Harding made the correct – though, inevitably, controversial – choice to push the tempo to the brink of unplayability. Others tame the brilliant and reckless movement by holding the tempo back in futile hope of lining up all the nervously skittering string parts, but in so doing they kill the life of the music. This music doesn’t live if it is not taking risks, and Harding rightly focused on achieving a manic feel, even pushing the tempo further during the closing dash. It was exhilarating, imperfect and perfectly alive. The conductor then found the ideal tempo for the Adagio espressivo, slow enough to allow for a radiant unfurling of the longing melody, yet flowing enough to hold the abstracted fugato middle section together. Harding never once forgot the long arc of the symphony, the restless, at times desperate, search for fulfillment.
The finale brings another challenge: the trap which trips most conductors is that the second half of the finale, while in the same fast tempo, is written with longer note values, making it feel slower. All too many conductors lose their nerve and speed up, in a vain attempt to make the second half of the movement feel as action-packed as the first, totally garbling Schumann’s trajectory, which aims to rise above the earlier turmoil into a noble, spacious coda, a denouement that Schumann invented, though Bruckner and Mahler would later follow his lead in several major works. Harding rightly understood the transcendence of this finale and animated the music with surging warmth while refusing to rush the tempo. This allowed the closing pages to billow out movingly, completing Schumann’s autobiographical story of how he pulled himself back from the brink of emotional collapse by finding himself and his soul in the music as he wrote it.
This was vital and moving music-making. Suffice it to say that not only was this the finest performance I have heard of Schumann’s Second since former Cleveland music director Christoph von Dohnányi‘s rendition, this was even better, risking more in the Scherzo and climbing higher in the finale. In a world where few conductors seem capable of recognizing and respecting Schumann’s emotional transcendence, Harding offered a rare treasure, and the poised but daring Cleveland Orchestra, led by gorgeous solos from Frank Rosenwein on oboe and Afendi Yusuf on clarinet, delivered it.
Mark Sebastian Jordan