by Daniel Hathaway
If these fingers were crafting a marketing piece for The Cleveland Orchestra’s concerts on the weekend of March 2 rather than a review, they might be tempted to entice readers to attend with such alliterative flights of prose as “Sizzling Sonic Spectacular — and more.” But in retrospect, the Orchestra’s performance of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition was just that.
The huge orchestra that filled the Mandel stage after intermission on Sunday played the closing pages of Maurice Ravel’s brilliant orchestration of the original solo piano score with spacious grandeur, the kind of treatment “The Great Gate of Kiev” deserves in these perilous times.
Franz Welser-Möst led the audience through the gallery of Victor Hartmann’s idiosyncratic art like a skilled docent, pointing up interesting details and drawing precise playing from his orchestral colleagues. [Read more…]