by Daniel Hathaway
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Thomas Adès is obsessed with sound color, as he vividly demonstrated with the assistance of the unflappable Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus (expertly prepared by Lisa Wong) in his guest appearance as curator, composer, and conductor at Severance Music Center on Thursday evening, February 20.
Works by Jan Sibelius, Kaija Saariaho, Charles Ives and Adès himself visited a vast spectrum of choral and orchestral hues that can be heard by the ear. Some of them use those colors to make poignant social commentary at the same time.
Color is represented impressionistically in the inexorable ebbing and flowing of the sea in Sibelius’ The Oceanides and Saariaho’s Otra Mar, and through musical collisions in Charles Ives’ Orchestral Set No. 2. And in the third, recently added movement of Adès’s America: the Prophecy, in ominous musical proclamations.
When Thomas Adès was commissioned to write a piece for Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic’s “Messages for the Millennium” program, he was asked to compose a “hopeful piece.” But what he delivered was a prophetic work about a country on the verge of crisis.
The Cleveland Orchestra kept the music-making all in the family last week. Franz Welser-Möst conducted, a favorite composer stopped by, and first associate concertmaster Peter Otto played soloist, taking on a piece with its own history at Severance.
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