REVIEW: Cleveland Orchestra Sets Prokofiev's 'Iron and Steel' in Motion
Above, Franz Welser-Möst conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. Photo by Steve J. Sherman.
January 21, 2024
Listening to Sergei Prokofiev’s Second Symphony, you might need to be reminded that this is tonal music. The Symphony No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 40 — composed during the Russian enfant terrible’s years in Paris — was under-rehearsed and poorly received at its premiere, its crashing density too much for 1925 ears to readily absorb, and it remains seldom performed.
The Cleveland Orchestra, in the second of two concerts as part of Carnegie Hall’s festival Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice, revived this avant garde masterpiece, contrasted ingeniously with Anton Webern’s 1928 Symphonie, Op. 21. Under the debonair baton of Franz Welser-Möst, who recently announced retirement in two years, the two works share a two-movement structure, the second movement of each being a theme and variations — but otherwise couldn’t be less alike.
Partly inspired by Arthur Honegger’s Pacific 231, Prokofiev imagined a symphony made of “iron and steel.” The first movement, Allegro ben articulato, finds the composer exploring fresh approaches to orchestral sonority, and exploring the Parisian vogue of style mécanique. Welser-Möst’s clear-headed approach brings an administrative, managerial order to this menacing, convoluted machine.
Franz Welser-Möst conducts the Cleveland Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. Photo by Steve J. Sherman
One of the thrills of living in New York is experiencing the world’s great visiting orchestras in this temple to symphonic music that is the Isaac Stern Auditorium, and Cleveland remains one of the world’s greats. The orchestra sounds as refined and capable as ever in this repertoire, their careful dynamic control illuminating planes of texture in Prokofiev’s explosion of imagination with laser precision. Even in angular, jutting phrases, the string section sings. The woodwind and brass timbres are blended and emulsified into a unified whole, impeccably tuned and meticulously balanced.
The first movement is a full workout for a large orchestra — Cleveland employed ten (!) basses here, and the floor beneath our seats shook at times. It ends enigmatically with a unison bell tone in the winds so perfectly in tune it sounded like one player. The mood as the second movement begins feels miles away; a sumptuous, yet murky accompaniment gives rise to the Andante theme in solo oboe, dolce e semplice, played here with haunting lyricism.
The first variation remains tranquil; muted strings and delicate woodwinds gradually whip up a froth until the texture of the accompaniment thickens into a ganache. And then, suddenly changing gears, the second variation, Allegro non troppo, kicks up the spice level. Even as the dissonance piles up, Prokofiev is still anchored by an inexorable tonal center, and there are tunes, even if they suggest the dark side of human nature, or perhaps even, as I hear in this work, presciently overlaying the frightening implications of a technological, industrial age.
Tensions ratcheted; Welser-Möst remained coolly focused and in command. By the fifth variation, Allegro con brio, the hall was boiling like a cauldron of scorching metal. The liquid’s shifting chiaroscuro became slippery and unstable, then outright distressing. Variation VI, Allegro moderato, builds inexorably to a grinding climax with violent ax strokes, and finally, sudden serenity, a sublime return of the theme.
Franz Welser-Möst, photo by Steve J. Sherman
Webern’s Symphony, composed a few years later in Austria, represents a very different aesthetic. Scored for strings (but no basses), harp, clarinet, bass clarinet, and two horns, Webern’s is the haiku poem of symphonies. Cleveland played it like a graceful dance in zero-gravity.
Prokofiev essentially operates in a melody and accompaniment texture, albeit where the accompaniment is contrapuntal and constructed of repeated melodic motifs; Webern’s music, however, completely blurs the line between melody and accompaniment, in favor of a matrix or fabric of overlapping and intersecting lines. The crystalline, abstract texture was celestial, but Welser-Möst remained earthbound and grounded.
The Cleveland Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. Photo by Steve J. Sherman
Prokofiev’s Second may have been a flop, but 1945’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100 — premiered in Moscow as the tides turned toward victory in World War II — provided him a tremendous success. Prokofiev claimed that his grand Fifth, amazingly composed in a single month, was “a work about the spirit of man.” The Andante opening movement — somber and probing — was deliberately paced and spacious in Welser-Möst’s hands, building gradually to animated, anxious outbursts in the strings, and heavy, weighted chords of existential discomfort in the brass. The percussion section folds into the texture organically, as if their purpose is altering the sound of the other instruments.
Welser-Möst mercilessly drove the second movement, Allegro marcato, the hammering obstinate accompaniment needle sharp. The extended middle section was like a jewel box of orchestral treats; the subsequent Adagio demonstrated the conductor’s operatic sensibility, as well as the string section’s long-arced sense of line. The finale, Allegro giocoso, begins dramatically, and unfolds slowly. But once the gleeful, Mozartian momentum takes flight, it’s a rollicking pleasure ride to the adrenaline-rush conclusion.
Composed under threatening political scrutiny from Stalin’s regime, yet during a period in which he cleverly curated a language that defied obvious interpretation, the Fifth Symphony is one of Prokofiev’s most gratifying creations. Welser-Möst’s thoughtful, spiritually generous and viscerally exciting reading brought New York’s audience to its feet.
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