- Roger Mastroianni
Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Möst has a house on Lake Attersee in Austria, which is where Gustav Mahler composed his third symphony. That should give him special insight into the piece, an exuberant celebration of the natural world inspired by the spectacular mountain setting.
But it was less a sense of place than a matter of approach that shaped the Cleveland Orchestra’s season-opening concert at Severance last night, which was devoted solely to Mahler’s longest (95 minutes) symphonic work. In a discussion before the concert, Welser-Möst noted a significant difference in his style, not just with Mahler but across the board.
This article appears in Sep 19-25, 2012.
“The female half of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and the full Children’s Chorus were not especially sharp in their brief parts in the fifth movement” does this mean we were almost in tune, or that we were dull, or that we weren’t crisp and clear?…Maybe we were fuzzy? I just don’t know.