Luckily, after intermission, things picked up, with Measha Brueggergosman as the soloist in the Wesendonck Lieder. (Fashion note: her gown was a silvery, reflective flowing number, as if she had been wrapped in loose aluminum foil. She looked fab-u-lous and was doing her trademark barefoot thing. I still want to know if she was barefoot when she sang at the opening ceremonies for the Vancouver Olympics. Can any Canadians report?) Although these songs are often (mostly?) sung by sopranos, the tessitura is quite low, and they showed off Measha’s rich mid- and low register. Franz brought the orchestra down for some thrilling pianissimo playing.

The concert finished with nifty performances of the prelude to Die Meistersinger, and “The Ride of the Valkyries” from Die Walküre very cleanly played. (How often do you hear all those sixteenth notes in the violins articulated in unison.)

The weekend’s concerts were audio-recorded for a future CD release. I hope the first half was better on one of the preceding evenings.
The orchestra’s next major project is the stage performances of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, with cast imported from Franz’s outpost in Zurich.  I’ll miss it, so no report from VFB.

Measha Brueggergosman

Tom Trenney

A busy concert weekend upcoming for VFB:  Attending Tom Trenney’s master class with CIM organ students on Saturday morning, Cleveland Orchestra Wagner concert on Saturday night with the fabulous Measha Brueggergosman, fresh from her appearance at the opening ceremonies at the Vancouver Olympics. (I traded my usual Friday night tix for Saturday, because I can’t cope with the Fridays@7 extravaganza tonight.)  Then Tom Trenney’s organ recital at First Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon.

Each year there are multiple new recordings of Handel’s most famous work, Messiah. Since Handel revised the work for each performance that he gave of Messiah, there is no such thing as an “original version,” so most recordings now attempt to recreate some particular performance or other, or occasionally other arrangements (e.g. Mozart’s) of the oratorio. Many of them are outstanding, but it is somewhat refreshing to hear a new recording that is a middle of the road performance, with a nod toward being historically informed, but performed with modern instruments.

Such is Stephen Layton’s new recording of Messiah with that wonderful British vocal ensemble Polyphony and the Britten Sinfonia.  The uniformly excellent soloists are Julia Doyle, soprano, Iestyn Davies, countertenor, Allan Clayton, tenor, and Andrew Foster-Williams, bass.  Iestyn Davies is an up-and-coming countertenor, and to my mind is the best of the group.  Andrew Foster-Williams has a lovely, well-produced voice, but it seems a little light for some of the great exclamations required in Handel’s arias, especially “The Trumpet Shall Sound,” which for me the standard will always be John Shirley-Quirk in Coliin Davis’s landmark recording from the mid-1960s.

The recording follows a live London performance with these forces in December 2008.  Polyphony’s annual performances of Messiah are a London tradition, so it is good to have a permanent audio souvenir.

Polyphony’s choral sound is clear and bright, with excellent diction.  A few of Layton’s dynamic choices seem a bit mannered, and I’m not sure what prompted his decision to begin the closing “Amen” chorus a capella, especially since Handel has a figured bass part for the opening of the chorus.

But like Goldilocks’s adventures at the three bears’ house, this recording is neither too hot at the cutting edge of performance practice, nor too cold with no style.  Rather it is a fine sensible and tasteful performance that should be pleasing to a wide audience.

I only heard her sing live once, in a performance of Der Rosenkavalier in the early 1980s.  She played the Marschallin (although at various points in her career, she had also sung the other principal roles of Octavian and Sophie). The other leading ladies that night, in Cleveland’s cavernous Public Auditorium, were Frederica Von Stade and Kathleen Battle.  She was a great artist, later known for her performances of Janacek’s operas, especially in the recordings for Decca conducted by Charles Mackerras.

The scheme of the Fridays@7 concerts is that there is an early start time (7:00 PM),  a straight-through, without intermission concert by the Cleveland Orchestra for about 75 minutes, followed by a party in the main lobby with cash bar and informal “world” music and lots of schmoozing.

British conductor Jonathan Nott was the guest conductor this weekend. The opening set included Dvorak’s Cello Concerto with former Clevelander Alisa Weilerstein as the soloist. She gave a lovely performance.  The second work on the program was Richard Strauss’s tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra, known most notoriously as the main theme from Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, a fact which did not escape one of my fellow concert goers sitting near me; during the opening bars, in full voice he said, “That’s 2001!”  There is, of course, another thirty minutes.  I was reminded how many of the amazing orchestral techniques that Strauss used in Zarathustra that he later recycled in other works.  (I think especially of the long passages for low strings that later play such a role in Salome.)  The work has thrilling climaxes but ends inconclusively.

After the main part of the concert, those who wished (which seemed to be a large portion of the audience) adjourned to the lobby for another session of music “curated” by percussionist Jamey Haddad.  It was very crowded at first, but the crowd thinned out after while to make a more comfortable setting.  Ms. Weilerstein joined the ensemble for works by Astor Piazzolla, Bill Evans and others.

The evening had the feel of great novelty.  It remains to be seen if the format can be sustained over time.  I have doubts without someone creating very imaginative secondary programming that will continue the novelty.  For now, however, the Cleveland Orchestra appears to have a hit.

With absolutely parochial interest, I note that the Norton Memorial Organ was used in this performance, played by Joela Jones, to give an added sonic “boost” to the bass, but also supporting the vocal lines.  It was mostly not audible, but it was “there,” and I’m glad they used the organ.

Russell Braun has a lovely voice, but he seemed a bit underpowered for this particular performance.  (Or perhaps Franz should have shut down the orchestra a bit more.)  In the single movement that the soprano soloist appears, one has gotten used to hearing light voices (think Kathleen Battle, Dawn Upshaw, or even the German Christine Schäfer). Nicole Cabell, although obviously a lyric soprano, has a darker, richer, more luscious voice.  It made a nice contrast with the “classic” texture of sound in the rest of the performance.

The concert opened with a Cleveland premiere of Chor (for orchestra), a 2003-04 work by German composer Jörg Widmann, who is beginning his two season tenure as the orchestra’s Young Composer Fellow. While it is impossible to judge a complex contemporary work on one hearing, what is not in question is the Cleveland Orchestra’s brilliant performance. The work is in a broad arc with a stupendous central climax marked with ear-splitting rolls on suspended cymbals, strings at extremely high pitch, and, I believe, multiple police whistles. (It was really too loud, and I felt forced to hold my ears.) The pace is slow, with many long notes overlapping one another.  An offstage solo trumpet (the orchestra’s amazing principal trumpet Michael Sachs) started the work with a dialogue with a bowed vibraphone and notes on an accordion (played by the ever-versatile Joela Jones).  The texture and amplitude gradually increase until the climax, then start to dissolve again, but with “speed bumps” along the way–huge interjections by the full orchestra interrupting the quiet flow of the music.  At several points there are quite tonal “chorale”-type passages of an almost of a Brahmsian nature, but always deconstructed, as if the aural equivalent of looking in a funhouse mirror.  The work makes extensive use of quarter-tone playing in all the parts, and the orchestra’s pitch and clarity were quite astonishing.  (After hearing Chor, I am tantalized by what the orchestra would make of Thomas Ades’s monumental and beautiful  Tevot, written for Berliner Philharmoniker.  The orchestra is performing Ades’s Violin Concerto later this season, and Franz has conducted more of his music in the past.  Come on Franz, let’s have Tevot!)

Virtual Farm Boy is constantly complaining about too many standing ovations at concerts in Cleveland, but this is a case where the ovation was richly deserved.  The orchestra is off for a few weeks on European tour and a residency in Vienna.  We’ll look forward to their return in mid-November.

A frog goes into a bank and approaches the teller. He can see from her nameplate that her name is Patricia Whack.

‘Miss Whack, I’d like to get a $30,000 loan to take a holiday.’

Patty looks at the frog in disbelief and asks his name. The frog says his name is Kermit Jagger, his dad is Mick Jagger, and that it’s okay, he knows the bank manager.

Patty explains that he will need to secure the loan with some collateral.

The frog says, ‘Sure. I have this,’ and produces a tiny porcelain elephant, about an inch tall, bright pink and perfectly formed.

Very confused , Patty explains that she’ll have to consult with the bank manager and disappears into a back office.

She finds the manager and says, ‘There’s a frog called Kermit Jagger out there who claims to know you and wants to borrow $30,000, and he wants to use this as collateral.’

She holds up the tiny pink elephant. ‘I mean, what in the world is this?’




(prepare to groan at this point…..)




The bank manager looks back at her and says…

‘It’s a knickknack, Patty Whack. Give the frog a loan, His old man’s a Rolling Stone.’