United States Blossom Music Festival 2025 [3]: Jess Gillam (soprano saxophone), Cleveland Orchestra / Jonathon Heyward (conductor). Blossom Music Center, Cuyahoga Falls, 26.7.2025. (MSJ)
Dvořák – ‘Carnival Overture’, Op.92
Anna Clyne – Glasslands
Beethoven – Symphony No.6 in F major, Op.68, ‘Pastoral’ (with the Kent Blossom Chamber Orchestra)
It was very clever of the Cleveland Orchestra to arrange to have a thunderstorm rumbling in the distance as the storm section of Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony approached. Surely the Ohio summer weather with 85% humidity had nothing to do with it. But that was just one of a string of delights in this concert, which marked the orchestra debut of both conductor Jonathon Heyward and soprano saxophonist Jess Gillam, as well as the local premiere of a vivid recent work by British composer Anna Clyne.
Heyward, currently music director of the Baltimore Symphony, is a young conductor, but he seems cut from a different cloth than the celebrity types constantly courting attention. Rather, he is very focused on the music. He opened the concert with a favorite, Dvořák’s ‘Carnival Overture’, which can come off on autopilot if the conductor sets it in motion and gets out of the way. At the same time, there is such an intricate lattice of instrumental activity and cross-rhythms, it could go off the rails without leadership. Heyward shrewdly balanced intervention and momentum, clarifying textures in places with the shaping of long phrases and occasional tempo tweaks but without inhibiting the orchestra’s enthusiasm by too much fussing. This orchestra has a long, glorious track record with Dvořák, and Heyward knew when to let them run with it. Particularly lovely were the woodwind solos in the middle slow section, with Jessica Sindell (flute), Frank Rosenwein (oboe), Daniel McElway (clarinet), John Clouser (bassoon) and Robert Walters (English horn) playing gorgeously, capped by a sweetly gleaming violin solo by Liyuan Xie, the first associate concertmaster.
Then came the Cleveland Orchestra premiere of Anna Clyne’s Glasslands, a concerto for soprano saxophone and orchestra. I have encountered Clyne’s Masquerade elsewhere, and it is a good piece that shows the composer’s skill in handling an orchestra, but Glasslands is even better. The description of it as being inspired by the Irish folklore of the banshee, a wailing female spirit who announces death, made me wonder if this was going to be too heavy for a summer festival concert, but it turns out that even if there are some shadows and shrieks, it is the kind of depiction that puts vivid, entertaining storytelling first and foremost.
Soprano saxophone player Jess Gillam walked out on the Blossom Pavilion stage wearing a brightly sequined black outfit, her blue glasses contrasting sharply with her red hair and all of it contrasting with her burnished brass instrument. I don’t normally talk about performers’ clothes, but I do so here just to point out that if you walk on the stage with the Cleveland Orchestra in a flashy getup, you had better be first-rate. Gillam is. In fact, she may single-handedly establish the soprano sax as a classical concerto instrument, because her playing is not only technically formidable, but also compelling and communicative. Gillam’s mad skills clearly provoked Clyne into writing an astonishing piece, modern in manner yet timeless in its folkloric elements and just plain fun. One could imagine slipping out a passage of Danny Elfman’s soundtrack for the Tim Burton series Wednesday on Netflix and seamlessly slipping in parts of this wickedly high-spirited concerto.
It opened with a stylized high-register shriek from the sax depicting the banshee’s wail and went on with mesmerizing urgency. The slow movement offered gently sad consolation but delivered an extraordinary moment. At one point, Gillam and the woodwinds of the orchestra arched tenderly with the melody but, beneath that, principal double bass Maximilian Dimoff played a quiet but fiendishly unsettling solo, which perfectly caught the feel of anxiety undercutting the attempts at peace, something we have all felt at times of stress. The finale added elements of a frantic folk dance before the banshee returned for the crisp ending. Both piece and player were tremendous fun, with conductor and orchestra joining fully in the sense of adventure. Gillam followed it up with a breathtaking encore, Duke Ellington’s ‘In a Sentimental Mood’, which floated like flakes of red gold through the pavilion’s rich acoustic.
After such an impressive first half, an old chestnut like Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony might come across as an unadventurous afterthought. Happily, that wasn’t the case in Jonathon Heyward’s baton-free hands. Without resorting to micromanaging or exaggeration, the conductor kept Beethoven’s evocation of the countryside moving with fresh eagerness and just enough room to savor some details in passing. As familiar as the piece is, it is remarkable how rarely it gets that kind of understanding. Heyward simply let it speak, again concentrating on long-shape phrasing and transition points without slipping into autopilot when there is little busywork for the baton.
The first movement was buoyant, the second truly flowing and the dancing peasants of the third movement had liveliness to their step. I did feel that the fourth movement storm could have raged a little more fiercely – in particular, I wanted the conductor to pull more depths of sound from the basses who play that mighty descending line which is not so much a depiction of the storm as it is the composer’s human reaction to nature’s awe. But the timpani had plenty of punch, so it was still good. The finale rolled out deliciously, the conductor again declining to let the music sag into sentimentality. It was particularly impressive that the work was kept so nimble, because the full Cleveland Orchestra was joined for the performance by the Kent Blossom Chamber Orchestra, a summer student training ensemble. The total number of musicians was huge, but Heyward kept the mass nimble and lithe.
A fine concert with several notable debuts, all of whom are worth hearing more often.
Mark Sebastian Jordan