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Franz takes Cleveland
Plus the BSO and the BCMS
BY DAVID WEININGER

You’d think that Franz Welser-Möst would be just a bit anxious during this, his inaugural year with the Cleveland Orchestra. After all, he’s taking over an outfit that enjoyed wide acclaim under its previous music director, Christoph von Dohnányi. And he’s preparing the Clevelanders for his first East Coast tour with him, one that will arrive at Symphony Hall next Sunday. But if he’s nervous, he doesn’t sound it.

"It’s just extremely exciting, really wonderful," he says over the phone from his home in Cleveland before a concert at Severance Hall. "No one, including me, would have forecast that the orchestra and I would have bonded musically so quickly, or that the audience would also sense it right away."

To the question of whether he’s worried about the shoes he has to fill, Welser-Möst simply replies: "No." He laughs a bit and elaborates: "My standpoint is quite simple. They went through a long and thorough search, and I’m the one that they asked. I can only be the musician I am. If I were looking over my shoulder all the time, it would be the first step towards failure. We’re here to make great music all the time, and that’s hard enough."

Hard it may be, but it’s a lot easier with an orchestra of this quality. During his 20 years in Cleveland, Dohnányi brought George Szell’s Old World musical standards into the 20th century; the ensemble now sounds as comfortable in contemporary music as it does in Mozart. And it’s clear that the 42-year-old Austrian conductor is intent on challenging his audiences as well as holding up traditions. Only a few hours after speaking to me, he’s due to give the world premiere of Orion, a new work by Kaija Saariaho, a young Finnish composer whose music has fascinated Welser-Möst since he heard the premiere of her opera "L’amour de loin" ("Love from Afar") in Salzburg in 2000. "That was the moment I decided to commission something from her."

Orion — which will be on the Symphony Hall program — is emblematic of Saariaho’s music, a panoply of slowly shifting moods. "Her music is just incredibly atmospheric," he explains. "She writes very beautiful music with very intense colors." It also includes some virtuosic solo writing — "You can tell that she wrote it with this orchestra in mind" — and a final movement that’s lively and even lighthearted. All of which makes it a great partner for Mahler’s riotously colorful Seventh Symphony, which rounds out the Symphony Hall program.

Asked about his broader plans for his tenure at the Cleveland (he’ll be there for at least five years), Welser-Möst shies away from grand visions and returns to the theme of music’s sheer diversity. "I think a season is there to show all the variety there is in music, and that’s exactly what we’ll continue to do. It’s not enough simply to play on a very high level — you have to engage the audience, to move them, connect with them. That’s why I’m such a firm believer in variety."

And variety his audiences will get. His programs this year have ranged from Haydn’s Creation to Strauss waltzes to the premiere of Seeing, a piano concerto by Christopher Rouse. Even in familiar composers he finds unfamiliar works, such as Schubert’s rarely played Second Symphony and Beethoven’s C-sharp-minor String Quartet in an arrangement for string orchestra by Dimitri Mitropoulos.

Welser-Möst will be carefully watched in Cleveland. For now, he’s projecting both a quiet confidence and a sense of wonder at the outstanding ensemble he’s inherited. "I’m a bit spoiled now — there are pieces that I never want to hear played by anyone else. Last week we were playing Strauss’s Four Last Songs with Felicity Lott, and I thought, ‘My God, I’ve never heard this played more beautifully in my life.’ "

The Cleveland Orchestra performs at Symphony Hall next Sunday, February 9, at 3 p.m. as part of the FleetBoston Celebrity Series. Remaining tickets are $40 to $80. Call (617) 482-6661.

ALL OVER THE MAP. The BSO, under Leonard Slatkin, offers a French piece about an Italian sculptor (Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini overture), the First Symphony of Englishman William Walton, and the Violin Concerto of the eclectic American Edgar Meyer. Hilary Hahn is the soloist, and the concerts will be given February 6 and 8 at 8 p.m. and February 7 at 1:30. Tickets are $25-84; call (617) 266-1200. And the Boston Chamber Music Society restarts the Franco-Prussian War with a program of Debussy and Brahms, with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Passages thrown in for good measure. Those concerts are February 7 at Jordan Hall and February 9 at Sanders Theatre, both at 7:30. Tickets are $16-$42; call (617) 349-0086.

Issue Date: January 30 - February 6, 2003

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