The Cleveland Orchestra's Saturday concert at Blossom Music Center featured enchanting performances of Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été with soprano Veronique Gens, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, leaving the audience exhilarated and on their feet, writes Kevin McLaughlin of Cleveland Classical.
The Cleveland Orchestra's Saturday concert at Blossom Music Center featured enchanting performances of Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été with soprano Veronique Gens, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, leaving the audience exhilarated.
The opening woodwind chords that ushered us into Shakespeare’s magical world were well balanced and pure, largely thanks to the flute and clarinet playing of Jessica Sindell and Daniel McKelway. Violins scurrying at a fast but prudent tempo — and an impossibly soft but effective dynamic — summoned the fairies.Les nuits d’été, Berlioz’s songs on death and lost love, perfectly suit Veronique Gens’ rich-toned soprano.
Looking straight outward into the crowd, Gens’ face was as expressive as her voice. In “Absence,” she seemed to physically retreat, lamenting the immense distance separating the lovers . The soprano unerringly captured the contrasting moods of the poetry — the blank, despairing persona at the end of “Au cimetière,” , which, versus the smiling insouciant joy of “L’île inconnue,” .
The conductor was attentive to musical details, particularly in the strings at the beginning of the second movement. Both orchestra and conductor knew how to take their time, allowing passages to play out. In the concluding Allegro con brio certain details got a little lost, but it was a small price to pay. Wild merriment reigned by the end, giving a nod to Wagner’s description of the work as the “apotheosis of dance.
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