NOTEWORTHY/Chestnut Hill LOCAL by Michael Caruso for 2/12/2009

I had similar reasons for looking forward to hearing both concerts I attended this weekend. After having heard excellent performances by the Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra Tempesta di Mare and the Philadelphia Singers last Sunday afternoon, I was eager to hear the baroque Instruments ensemble Camerata Ama Deus perform Saturday evening and compare the two groups. With our own Philadelphia Orchestra out of town on tour in Europe, I could hardly wait to hear the Cleveland Orchestra on Sunday afternoon. This was all the more the case since the Philadelphians had NOT been included in a recent listing of the world's top 20 orchestras while the Clevelanders most definetly had made the cut.

Camerata Ama Deus' concert in St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Chestnut Hill was dubbed "Handel Candlemas." The title caused me to think back on the group's most recent program in Chestnut Hill, "Baroque Christmas." That purely instrumental concert was extremely light on discernible Christmas connections. Even so, it more convincingly honored the spirit of the holiday named in its title than did this most recent outing.

"Candlemas" -- so named for the feast's candle-lit procession -- marks the end of the 40 days following Christmas. At this time, the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph went up to Jerusalem for her ritual Purification and the Presentation of Jesus, her first-born son, to the Lord in the Temple. All was accomplished according to the Mosaic Law. Despite a raft of rambling spoken program notes that dealt almost as much with Johann Sebastian Bach and his music as they did with George Frideric Handel and his, conductor Valentin Radu uttered nary a word about Candlemas. For those already in the know, Candlemas actually was celebrated on Monday, February 2, not Saturday, February 7. But for those not familiar with the feasts of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, the concert's title must have remained one of those unexplained mysteries.

Above and beyond not making a connection between the series of concerti performed by Camerata Ama Deus Saturday night and Candlemas, there's almost always an inherent difficulty when assembling a purely instrumental program of music by Handel. The facts of his having been born the same year of 1685 as was Bach and not all that far away in miles make comparisons inevitable, all the more so since both were German-born. But while Bach remained close to home throughout his life, Handel travelled to Italy and eventually to England when his patron, George the Prince-Elector of Hanover, became King George I of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Handel's Italian studies enhanced his natural gift for beguiling lyricism, compelling harmonies and imaginative scoring. They also instilled a love of opera that inspired him to compose 42 Italian operas before he composed "Messiah." Although "Messiah" is undeniably his masterpiece, it's within the pages of those Italian operas that one finds most of Handel's greatest music. For him, simple instrumental music was a charming diversion, with the exceptions of "Music for the Royal Fireworks" and the "Water Music Suites." To program a concert of Handel's instrumental music with no more than one pastiche from either of those great scores and then speak slightingly of him in comparison to Bach is unfair to Handel and the audience. Bach may, indeed, have lavished the greater portion of his genius on sacred choral music, but he nonetheless poured brilliance enough into his instrumental works. Handel never did. To celebrate the 250th anniversary of his passing in 1759 without including excerpts from any of those operas or oratorios -- or sacred vocal/choral music focussed on Candlemas -- was unjust and uninformative.

Of the pieces programmed Saturday evening, those that received the most convincing renditions were the three solo concerti: the Oboe Concerto in G minor with soloist Sarah Davol, the Flute Concerto in D major with Steven Zohn, and the Suite in D for Trumpet, Strings & Continuo with Elin Frazier. Davol expressively projected the intimate sweetness of tone of the mellow baroque oboe. Zohn proffered such delicacy of color and eloquence of phrasing with the wooden baroque flute that one truly lamented its modern replacement by silver, gold or platinum. And Frazier proved that the baroque trumpet produced a singing, rather than a ringing, tone. In all three works, Radu led the period instruments of the Camerata Ama Deus with sensitivity to his soloists' interpretations. [emphasis added]

The other two works -- the Concerto Grosso in G major and the Conerto Grosso in A minor -- received readings that were inconsistent interpretively and unstable technically.

GREAT ORCHESTRA

Sunday afternoon's concert by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Franz Welser-Most, its music director for the past seven seasons, gave credible proof to the claim that this is, indeed, America's finest symphony orchestra. Their rendition of Shostakovich's "Leningrad" Symphony No. 7 in C major in the Kimmel Center's Verizon Hall was simply an example of magnificent music-making.

I've always believed that both the Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra continue to maintain their historic personalities more faithfully than do any of America's other major orchestras. Going all the way back to George Szell in Cleveland and Fritz Reiner in Chicago (and Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute of Music) in the 1950s, the Cleveland and Chicago Orchestras remain bastions of chamber music intimacy married to power and power married to refinement, respectively. Although Franz Welser-Most assuredly has not yet achieved the mythic stature of the late George Szell, his interpretation of the Shostakovich and his ability to transmit that interpretation to his audience via the playing of the Cleveland Orchestra stand as testaments to a natural musical gift in the process of developing into a major conducting career.

Composed in 1941 during the German siege of Leningrad (now returned to its original name of St. Petersburg), Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony has always held a special place in the canon of what is now regarded as the greatest series of symphonies written in the 20th century. Although Shostakovich admittedly focussed more intellectual invention into his chamber music, most especially his string quartets, even his most popular symphonies reveal a level of developmental genius worthy of comparison with that of Beethoven. Despite its more apparent accessibility due to its having been written for a broader audience with patriotic inspiration as its immediate intent, the Seventh Symphony rings with thrilling emotion as it provokes with harsh timbres, knotty textures, jagged rhythms and crashing dissonances whose resolutions are both fearful and exhilarating.

The Cleveland Orchestra is nothing short of an instrumental marvel. All of its sections -- strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion -- played with technical virtuosity and expressive musicality throughout the dauting 70 minutes of the Seventh Symphony's length. Each choir played with exemplary ensemble within itself. The strings were immaculately matched in lustrous, shimmering sounds and eloquent phrasing from first violins down to doublebasses. The tones of the woodwinds were a technicolor spectrum of varied hues that projected clearly on their own yet sang together as a finely tuned choir. In particular, principal flutist Joshua Smith and principal oboist Frank Rosenwein played stunningly. The brass proffered stentorian potency without slipping in braying harshness, and the percussion battery bristled with bracing clarity and rhythmic precision.

Yet under the precise and intense baton of Franz Welser-Most, all of these orchestral colors and textures came together to form an interpretive whole that was far greater than the sum of all these assuredly beautiful parts. And once together, Welser-Most delineated an interpretation that caught the spirit of a people fighting for their existence within the structural context of a dramatically expanded yet masterfully formed classical symphony. Welser-Most might not yet be the equal of one of those legendary maestri of the past, but he's certainly headed in the right direction with the lucky Cleveland Orchestra.

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