Salome, Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, May 24, 2012
The Cleveland Orchestra’s annual residency at Carnegie Hall always raises much anticipation, particularly since its dynamic conductor Franz Welser-Möst took over the orchestra in 2002. Ten years later he has made his annual tour to New York to lead the orchestra in two concerts: an orchestral evening dominated by Brahms and Shostakovich and a concert performance of Richard Strauss’s searing opera Salome. Welser-Möst is not above criticism. His orchestral performances are sometimes found too precise and too technical to capture the grand sway of romantic works, for example. This was somewhat in evidence in the ensemble’s first concert, marred at the last minute by the cancelation of pianist Yevgeny Bronfman, who was ill. Instead of the announced Brahms Piano Concert No. 2, the orchestra found violinist Gil Shaham to perform the solo part in Brahms’s Violin Concerto. The Clevelanders acquitted themselves admirably, and Shaham did well enough under the circumstances. But an element of passion was missing. The second part of the evening featured Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s Laterna magica, a haunting 2008 work which received its New York premiere in this performance. The work is harmonically strange, but not at all without power. It is even a bit spooky, with the odd requirement that the woodwind musicians whisper words relating to light and color into their instruments at times. Impossible to hold to any standard of performance because of its recent composition, all that can be said is that Welser-Möst did well to bring it to our attention. The final piece, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6, was a bit pedestrian in playing and lacked the flair that a Gergiev or Temirkanov might for obvious reasons bring to the performance.
The second Cleveland evening showcased the orchestra at its most dynamic. It is not an exaggeration to say that Welser-Möst, now the director of the Vienna State Opera, may be more of an opera conductor, so fine is his ability to make an orchestra perform to support singers. The need is nowhere more acute than in Strauss’s Salome, with its dissonant scoring for both instruments and singers. Welser-Möst led a driving performance, scarcely skipping a single nuance in the vast tableaux that must be produced. Careful attention even went into the placement of the singers on stage. Eschewing concert opera’s usual straight line at the front of the stage format, here the cast was divided into two groups and placed on raised platforms that fanned out diagonally from stage right and stage left. Fortunately, the effort was crowned with the excellently cast Nina Stemme in the title role. Famous in both Wagner and Strauss and heiress to the proud Swedish high dramatic soprano tradition of Birgit Nilsson and Astrid Varnay, Stemme has conquered audiences everywhere with her full, rich middle register, soaring top notes, and impeccable diction. Since Salome is a rather more strident role than any Wagner heroine, there was some speculation that the voice might not be just right for the Strauss role. But it was. There is no better way to put it. Stemme’s natural range offered up the climatic highs and the chilling lows, including a delightfully monstrous G-flat at the end of the role’s meditation on the mystery of love’s capacity to outweigh the mystery of death. One left the hall wondering only how rewarding it would be to hear her in a staged performance.
Stemme’s sublime singing elided well with a truly outstanding supporting cast. Bass-baritone Eric Owens, one of the few genuinely successful soloists to emerge from the Metropolitan Opera’s troubled new Ring Cycle, mastered Jochanaan’s music with a strength and authority that only occasionally showed a hint of roughness. As Salome’s louche stepfather Herod, tenor Rudolf Schasching, known to Welser-Möst from his time as chief of Zürich’s opera but hardly known to American audiences, contributed an excellent repertoire singer’s voice into a part he obviously knows very well. Mezzo Jane Henschel was perfectly biting as his wife, Salome’s mother Herodias, who urges her daughter along on the path to evil. Garrett Sorenson’s Narraboth also stood out, and there was no reason to be disappointed with the fine ensemble cast of younger singers in supporting roles. Following on the excellent Chicago Symphony concert performance of Verdi’s Otello last season, New York should hope to hear much more fine opera in venerable Carnegie Hall. – Paul du Quenoy
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