From SFCV's Emerging Writers Program
The Cleveland Orchestra drove to neighboring Oberlin Conservatory on April 24 to play its first collaboration with boundary-breaking American pianist Jeremy Denk and Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki. These talents converged for a program of three pieces, each technically complex but stylistically light. Béla Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto and Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka are respectively games of superficial frivolity and theatrics. Jean Sibelius’ tone poem Oceanides avoids heft in that its narrative stakes are low. The piece is illustrative rather than dramatic: It evokes the ocean in a variety of mellow tones.
The Sibelius opened the program with a pleasant hum of perfectly synchronized timpani rolls, like a soft tide. Oceanides is a series of crests: periodic increases in volume and rising melodies that mimic surging waves. These shifts were appropriately fluid, but the orchestra’s fluctuating colors could have been more vivid. Most satisfying was the climax, in which the strings slowly moved up and down a chromatic scale, creating the most tense and thrilling wave of all.
The much-anticipated Bartók concerto was next, featuring Denk, a 1990 Oberlin grad and recent MacArthur Fellow. While Barkók’s first and second concertos are defined by harsh tonality, this one feels almost frivolously lyrical. Denk breezed through alternatingly dulcet and untraditionally modal melodies so that neither dominated. Instead they seemed part of an experimental game. Midway through the first movement, the piece appeared to finally succumb to prolonged darkness — until strings entered with light pizzicatos and the piano resumed its initial, spritely theme.
The second movement begins with a string lullaby too interesting to incite sleep. Denk entered with simple, beautiful piano chords, sinking into each with a soft yet clear tone. Unrushed, he played with an
enchantingly natural rubato. But sport resumed as the action increased, the piano jumping playfully and almost disjointedly from one ardent idea to the next. Denk powered through this section, evoking a showy anger, not reminiscent of a terrifying rage so much as the clearly exaggerated thundering of a silent movie soundtrack, underscoring the concert’s atmosphere as a game.
Consistent freshness also characterized the third movement as the musicians navigated frequent rhythm fluctuations. Denk powered through this section, evoking a showy anger, not reminiscent of a terrifying rage so much as the clearly exaggerated thundering of a silent movie soundtrack, underscoring the concert’s atmosphere as a game. The audience called Denk back for an encore, and he obliged with an excerpt from Bach’s Goldberg Variations, steering the delicate piece like a confident sea captain on smooth waters.
Stravinsky’s Petrushka ended the night with merriment. Originally written as a ballet about three puppets and a magician, Stravinsky’s own concert adaptation lacks none of the ballet’s theatrics. The orchestra so transformed its tone and texture with each phrase that one could easily envision this cast of characters and the unfolding mischievous events; Mälkki’s waving arms could have been controlling invisible marionette strings.
In Petrushka, a simple melody always sings through the orchestral layers, but these layers are intricately wrought. Flying clarinet runs, coarsely sweeping bass phrases, and broad flute interval jumps all emerge, and the instrumentalists rendered these with compelling fierceness. Rhythm fared slightly less well, and sections occasionally fell slightly out of sync, but the musicians jumped back on tempo quickly. Petrushka is full of brief, vivid solos that voice story developments, and the musicians played strongly and evocatively through these exposed moments. From first to last, the Cleveland Orchestra delivered an evening of jolly virtuosity.