Cellist Moser provides the highlight in Cleveland Orchestra opener

By Lawrence Budmen

Johannes Moser performed Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 Friday night with the Cleveland Orchestra.

Johannes Moser performed Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 Friday night with the Cleveland Orchestra.

The Cleveland Orchestra opened the 10th anniversary of its Miami residency Friday night at the Arsht Center with a program featuring two glittering orchestral showpieces. But it was soloist Johannes Moser who took the evening’s musical honors with a probing reading of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1.

Moser has offered impressive performances of scores by Dvorak and Tchaikovsky in previous South Florida appearances. His bracing version of Shostakovich’s 1959 work, however, was music-making of an even higher order.

Originally conceived as a vehicle for Mistislav Rostropovich, this enigmatic score veers between Russian fireworks and darker rumblings. Many cellists play the piece in a coolly cerebral manner, concentrating on its opportunities for virtuosic display, but not Moser. From the initial bars of the opening Allegretto, he conveyed a plethora of emotions on a slender thread of tone. Moser is an elegant patrician of the instrument. While he does not command the largest sonority, his intonation is spot on, even in the fastest, high-flying passages. His fleet bowing carried the entire movement like a whirlwind.

Moser spun the mournful lament of the second movement in long, arching phrases. Melodic fragments were subtly shaded with minute variations of dynamics and tonal color.   Moser deliberately paced the long cadenza, assaying the difficult leaps of register with total accuracy while allowing the music to speak directly in an unforced manner.

By contrast the finale was taken at a lightning clip. Beneath the brilliance and verve of Moser’s playing, there was always expressive depth. Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero was an astute collaborator and the players responded with whipcrack intensity.

Guerrero dedicated the performance of Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 (“Organ”) to the city of Paris in the spirit of music’s power to heal following Friday’s deadly terrorist attacks. Only halfway through the score did the performance catch fire.

Opening his final season as principal guest conductor of the Clevelanders’ Miami residency, Guerrero’s direction displayed familiar interpretive strengths and weaknesses. On the down side, the long musical arc of large-scale symphonies seems to elude him. The first movement Allegro moderato was shaped in a perfunctory manner with some surprising imprecision from the Cleveland violins and overwrought climaxes; the ensuing Adagio was too slow and mannered.

Requisite vitality finally came through in the scherzo and the entrance of the organ for the finale rang with grandeur. Playing a fine sounding electric instrument at the front of the stage, Miami native Joela Jones, Cleveland’s longtime principal keyboardist, produced a large sonority but also captured the Gallic lyricism of the softer sections. Guerrero built the climaxes impressively, with an aptly sonorous conclusion.

The conductor excels at highly colorful orchestral showpieces and Carlos Chávez’s Sinfonia India found him in his element. With a snappy percussion section simulating native instruments, the rhythmically alert traversal throbbed with momentum. Even the lyrical second subject was given an undercurrent of astringency. The ensemble was at its best, all sections showcased in propulsive form.

Chavez was an important Latin American voice, his modernist style deeply influenced by Stravinsky. His six symphonies, concertos, ballet scores and chamber music are virtually never played. After ten seasons, it is time for the Cleveland ensemble to program major Latin-American scores rather than ten minute overtures. The work of Mexico’s Blas Galindo and Cuba’s Julían Orbón should also be explored. Latin America’s classical heritage needs to be celebrated in Miami.

The Cleveland Orchestra repeats the program 8 p.m. Saturday and returns in January for concerts under music director Franz Welser-Möst. arshtcenter.org.

Posted in Performances


2 Responses to “Cellist Moser provides the highlight in Cleveland Orchestra opener”

  1. Posted Nov 14, 2015 at 10:43 pm by Gonzalo Giraldo

    This great orchestra sounds much better under Giancarlo Guerrero’s baton than under Welser-Most’s. All three pieces were a joy to listen, and the Saint-Saens was both lyrical and forceful, as the score requires.

  2. Posted Nov 16, 2015 at 9:54 pm by Walter Kamlot

    Would like to read about the broken string on the cello at the Saturday evening performance

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Sat Nov 14, 2015
at 11:44 am
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