United States Blossom Music Festival 2025 [1]: Shelén Hughes (soprano), Reginald Mobley (countertenor), John Brancy (baritone), Blossom Festival Chorus, Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus, Cleveland Orchestra / Osmo Vänskä (conductor). Blossom Music Center, Cuyahoga Falls, 12.7.2025. (MSJ)
Sibelius – En saga, Op.9
Orff – Carmina Burana
The first minute of En saga, Jan Sibelius’s tone poem, announces the arrival of a stunning storytelling genius. With a handful of simple gestures, the composer paints a seething atmosphere that tells us tremendous things are about to happen. Though no written program dictates what heroic myths Sibelius may have had in mind, we the listeners are free to invent our own stories, with this music as vivid soundtrack. In a pointed performance like the one Osmo Vänskä led to start off the Cleveland Orchestra’s classical series in the 2025 Blossom Music Festival, it is stunning music, the kind of thing that makes one grateful for live performances.
Not all Finnish conductors are outstanding Sibelians, but Vänskä has proven his mettle in this repertory many times with sharply etched performances. Bringing that approach to the Cleveland Orchestra works tremendously well, considering that it is an orchestra steeped in a long tradition of clarity and inner cohesion. This orchestra gave the conductor a chance to deploy some knife-edged crescendos in the brass, with riveting details throughout the woodwinds (including a breathtaking clarinet solo by Afendi Yusuf), all without sacrificing the misty atmosphere summoned by the strings, especially the violas. The piece’s twenty minutes passed by in a breath.
Unlike En Saga, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana is not one concentrated narrative but, rather, a riotous collection of small scenes from medieval life, depicted vocally with rhythmic ostinato support from the orchestra. That means that the unequivocal stars are the singers, particularly the chorus which only briefly pauses throughout the piece. The Blossom Festival Chorus was in spectacular voice, having been meticulously prepared by director Lisa Wong. Typical of her attention was the consistent use of a Germanic pronunciation of the grab-bag of texts from Vulgate Latin, early German and French goliard poetry. Passages that get shouted in many performances (‘Egos sum abbas’, ‘Veni, veni, venias’) were sung here, but without any loss of energy. The Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus, directed by Jennifer Rozsa, were right there with the adults in precision.
John Brancy delivered the baritone solos with a fine mahogany voice, capable of considerable dexterity. ‘Estuans interius’, the song of a roving gambler, was delivered at breakneck speed without loss of clarity or power. Reginald Mobley had only one countertenor solo, but it is the spectacular ‘Olim lacus colueram’, the song of a swan being roasted over the fire, and Mobley mastered the grotesque solo with apparent ease, abetted by a darkly comical rendering of the opening bassoon solo by John Clouser. Shelén Hughes brought an affecting warmth to the soprano solos, navigating the stratospheric heights of ‘Dulcissime’ with poise.
Vänskä kept the performance moving compellingly, blowing past a few of Orff’s details in the process but keeping the tricky assemblage of thousands of moving parts focused and evocative. His appearances with the orchestra have all been excellent, including filling in for an indisposed Franz Welser-Möst to start the 2024/25 season with a blazing Tchaikovsky Pathétique (review here). May he continue as a regular visitor to this ensemble for a long time.
Mark Sebastian Jordan
Featured Image: Osmo Vänskä leads the Cleveland Orchestra in Sibelius’s En Saga © Roger Mastroianni/TCO