How it has survived is by bucking the trend. In 2002 Cleveland took on a 40-year-old music director when other orchestras wouldn’t look at a conductor under 60. Franz Welser-Möst, with rocky London beginnings behind him, set about building symbiosis. He recently renewed his contract until 2022 and I have never seen this sensitive, fine-tuned musician happier anywhere on earth (last summer he quit overnight as music director of the Vienna Opera).
The secret, Franz believes, is pride. Musicians in the Cleveland Orchestra can be seen on stage a full hour before the concert begins, rehearsing tricky passages, showing the audience how much they care. The woodwind and brass principals are swagger players, big personalities. You would not want to catch a scolding from the concertmaster: William Preucil looks as if he runs a double marathon before breakfast yet his solos are sweet as day-old kittens. Like many top soloists, he studied with Joseph Gingold, a former Cleveland concertmaster. Tradition here runs as deep as in Vienna.
Where last year’s LAO convention in Seattle was entertained by a sexist rapper, Cleveland played three programmes without a trace of frivolity: a semi-staging of Richard Strauss’s rarely-seen opera Daphne, a pairing of Beethoven’s Pastoral and Strauss’s Domestic symphonies, and a Messiaen-Dvořák triple bill. In the pianissimo before the Pastoral finale, the strings played at a mere hint of a whisper, daringly confident of the audience’s motionless, coughless attention.
The hall helps: Severance Hall, built in 1931, has not just the finest acoustic in America but the most gorgeous art deco ambience, no cent spared of an iron-ore mogul’s generosity. Pride glows from every gold-leaf wall. The orchestra plays the hall like an extra instrument.
Rather than grooming social leaders for big donations, Cleveland asks them to meet young professionals who join its under-40s circle. You want to get ahead in Cleveland? Go to a concert. The orchestra has reinvented itself as a high-achieving social network. Its president, Gary Hanson, who retires this summer, has highlighted several routes out of the LAO gloom.
A 50-minute flight away, I tested by way of comparison the vaunted Chicago Symphony — with $32 million after two recent donations — in its updated hall. The music director, Riccardo Muti, was away and the orchestra did not look much at his stand-in, the Seattle conductor Ludovic Morlot. Several of the principals had taken the night off.
A new violin concerto by the British composer Anna Clyne was given a desultory premiere (soloist: Jennifer Koh); Beethoven’s Eroica never rose above the routine. Player pride — the way Cleveland principals seem to own the music — was sporadic and the refurbished hall gave a dulled response to the night’s best efforts. Chicago — population 2.7 million — shows just how brilliant Cleveland has been in rethinking the future of the orchestra.
The secret, Franz believes, is pride. Musicians in the Cleveland Orchestra can be seen on stage a full hour before the concert begins, rehearsing tricky passages, showing the audience how much they care. The woodwind and brass principals are swagger players, big personalities. You would not want to catch a scolding from the concertmaster: William Preucil looks as if he runs a double marathon before breakfast yet his solos are sweet as day-old kittens. Like many top soloists, he studied with Joseph Gingold, a former Cleveland concertmaster. Tradition here runs as deep as in Vienna.
Where last year’s LAO convention in Seattle was entertained by a sexist rapper, Cleveland played three programmes without a trace of frivolity: a semi-staging of Richard Strauss’s rarely-seen opera Daphne, a pairing of Beethoven’s Pastoral and Strauss’s Domestic symphonies, and a Messiaen-Dvořák triple bill. In the pianissimo before the Pastoral finale, the strings played at a mere hint of a whisper, daringly confident of the audience’s motionless, coughless attention.
The hall helps: Severance Hall, built in 1931, has not just the finest acoustic in America but the most gorgeous art deco ambience, no cent spared of an iron-ore mogul’s generosity. Pride glows from every gold-leaf wall. The orchestra plays the hall like an extra instrument.
Rather than grooming social leaders for big donations, Cleveland asks them to meet young professionals who join its under-40s circle. You want to get ahead in Cleveland? Go to a concert. The orchestra has reinvented itself as a high-achieving social network. Its president, Gary Hanson, who retires this summer, has highlighted several routes out of the LAO gloom.
A 50-minute flight away, I tested by way of comparison the vaunted Chicago Symphony — with $32 million after two recent donations — in its updated hall. The music director, Riccardo Muti, was away and the orchestra did not look much at his stand-in, the Seattle conductor Ludovic Morlot. Several of the principals had taken the night off.
A new violin concerto by the British composer Anna Clyne was given a desultory premiere (soloist: Jennifer Koh); Beethoven’s Eroica never rose above the routine. Player pride — the way Cleveland principals seem to own the music — was sporadic and the refurbished hall gave a dulled response to the night’s best efforts. Chicago — population 2.7 million — shows just how brilliant Cleveland has been in rethinking the future of the orchestra.
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