By Daniel Hathaway|Cleveland Classical
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra set a high musical bar early in their new season at Severance Music Center on Thursday with totally committed performances of unique works by Arthur Honegger and Gustav Mahler.
Honegger set out to express the horror of World War II in three arresting movements named after religious texts in his Symphony No. 3, subtitled “Symphonie liturgique.”
And Mahler, who once said, “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything,” turned away from that idea in his symphonic song cycle “Das lied von der Erde,” crafting a six-movement work that simply sought to capture the experience of being human on planet Earth.