United States Mozart, Shostakovich: Emanuel Ax (piano), Cleveland Orchestra / Pablo Heras-Casado (conductor). Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, Cleveland, 6.12.2024. (MSJ)
Mozart – Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor, K.466
Shostakovich – Symphony No.10 in E minor, Op.93
It isn’t easy to write about Emanuel Ax. He is not at all like the outsized personalities who brand their style onto every measure they play, such as Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter or, in today’s concert world, Lang Lang. Ax is not a technician of almost frightening virtuosity and cerebral poise like Marc-André Hamelin, and not a delicate flower along the lines of a David Fray. He looks about as romantic and dashing as a tax accountant when he walks on stage, but pure poetry emerges when he puts his fingers to the keys.
Ax is, above all else, a magician, for he pulls off the feat of disappearing into the music. When listening to an Ax performance, I never have to think about someone standing between the composer and me. Ax miraculously melts into the music and takes you with him. Other pianists may swoon dramatically and make a flashy deal about their thunderous octaves or brilliant scales, but who else but Ax breathes the music like it is the very air that sustains us? Precious few, I would venture to say.
In this performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20, Ax achieved a stylishness that wisely incorporated some lessons about historically informed performance practice, such as a clean, light touch and flowing tempos, but he made no effort to make his Steinway grand sound like anything other than what it is: an elite modern instrument. To so artfully strike a poise between HIP practice and traditional piano playing must be the result of considerable thought and effort but, having found the right voice, Ax disappeared and left us with Mozart. Every one of Ax’s gestures was focused on voyaging through the work in a conscious, open-hearted manner: he plays it like he means it, because he does. The opening movement was a subtle mix of anxiety and longing. The slow movement, aside from its panicked middle section, sang sweetly, and the finale fought its way to a sense of relief. Conductor Pablo Heras-Casado encouraged the players of the Cleveland Orchestra to dig into the notes with a period-style starch that invigorated the ears yet was always in support of the soloist. Ax’s encore of Chopin’s ‘Grande valse brillante’ No.2 in A minor was a tender, moody bridge from the Mozart to the music to come.
Heras-Casado dug into the dark textures of Shostakovich’s Symphony No.10 and drew a powerful sound from an orchestra more often known for its reserve. No punches were pulled in the percussive climaxes of the first movement, from its brooding opening to the shell-shocked conclusion. The second movement – Shostakovich’s fierce portrait of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s insanity – was fast and furious. In the more personal third movement, Heras-Casado emphasized the composer’s anxiety in the insistent quotes of Shostakovich’s self-referencing motto, D-S-C-H (the notes D, E-flat, C and B natural). He built it into a panic, so that principal horn Nathaniel Silberschlag could interrupt with the noble summons the composer derived from the name of student Elmira Nazirova with whom he was infatuated.
The finale started thoughtfully, then brightened for the later folk-fest music. The bulk of the performance’s intensity had come in the first movement and the finale was self-propelled to its close, a rather different impact than Cleveland music director Franz Welser-Möst’s approach which has been heard here a number of times. Welser-Möst’s way has always been to control the succession of climaxes throughout the work, shifting more tension to the end which is then feverishly driven. Heras-Casado’s approach is similar to that done two seasons ago under guest conductor Klaus Mäkelä. It is fascinating to hear the different approaches, with much to be said for the savored climaxes and unleashed percussion of Heras-Casado and Mäkelä, even if I am finally more convinced by Welser-Möst’s overarching vision which balances the work more compellingly.
In addition to Silberschlag’s horn, the violin solo of associate concertmaster Liyuan Xie and solos from woodwinds Joshua Smith (flute), Frank Rosenwein (oboe), Afendi Yusuf (clarinet), John Clouser (bassoon) and Mary Kay Fink (piccolo) were highlights from an impressive instrumental turn by the orchestra.
It is wonderful to encounter Shostakovich live, for his greatness has only truly been recognized decades after his death, in the same way that a full reckoning of Mozart did not come until after he was gone. Shostakovich has since been seen as the voice of the early twenty-first century, just as Mahler was in the late twentieth century, composers’ times always running well behind their actual life spans. But one could argue that within the last decade, our world has crossed into more surreal and alternatingly hilarious and nightmarish modes. Alas, the music for these troubled times, the nervous and poetic symphonies of Sir Malcolm Arnold, is not played in Cleveland yet. How long before the next visionary is recognized?
Mark Sebastian Jordan