CLASSICAL
Put it like this. If audiences at the orchestra's upcoming concerts at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall and in Europe are as happy as the audience at Severance Hall, it should be a successful tour.
The Mahler is just one of a long list of works to be performed on the 15-concert, nine-city tour beginning next week. The orchestra will use local choruses for the Mahler, rather than taking along its own. The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus shared the Severance stage with the orchestra and two vocal soloists who will accompany the orchestra on tour. The soprano soloist was the excellent Malin Hartelius, who most recently sang Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier with the orchestra. Mezzo-soprano soloist Bernarda Fink's gleaming tone carried nicely over the group.
The two singers made a particularly sweet pair in the duet writing of the section beginning "O pain, piercer of all things." The orchestra's persuasive playing of the chromatic lines combined compellingly with the voices.
One place the orchestra will perform the Mahler Symphony No. 2 is at the Musikverein, the home of the Vienna Philharmonic. The Musikverein's intendant (executive director), Thomas Angyan, said in an interview this week that the Mahler Second's resurrection theme and Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 both fit well with the Roman Catholic holidays of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day on Nov. 1 and 2, respectively.
The Musikverein has a tradition, Angyan said, of presenting a program that has some religious component on All Saints' Day, and a symphony by the devoutly Catholic Bruckner seemed apt to him. The Bruckner on Nov. 1 and the Mahler on Nov. 2 will complete the orchestra's four-day residency at the Musikverein, the third such biennial event for the group. Out of the trip will come a permanent document, namely, a recording for television and DVD of the Bruckner Nine that will eventually be available for purchase in the United States.
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© Copyright 2007, AKRON BEACON JOURNAL, OHIO
