United States Mozart, Elgar: Francesco Piemontesi (piano), Cleveland Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada (conductor). Mandel Live performance Corridor at Severance Music Heart, Cleveland, 24.4.2025. (MSJ)
Mozart – Piano Concerto No.25 in C main, Ok.503
Elgar – Symphony No.1 in A-flat main, Op.55
Trendy magnificence abounded within the debut of visitor conductor Kazuki Yamada with the Cleveland Orchestra. In a particular transfer, he opted for a rarely-heard (in Cleveland, a minimum of) English basic, Sir Edward Elgar’s First Symphony. The piece is a beast, sounding longer than its fifty minutes of working time. The primary motion, particularly, covers an epic quantity of floor. Yamada proved a sublime, sure-handed information, expert at sorting Elgar’s string-drenched orchestration to spotlight colours whereas holding the complete sound shapely. I’d not have minded a contact extra urgency to weld the motion collectively, however Yamada was masterful in his unhurried, unflappable means.
Yamada savored the swirl of mischief, ominous menace and bemusing attraction spinning all through the scherzo second motion, encouraging the gamers to make use of full tone and colour. The third motion Adagio was the peak of the efficiency, by no means stagnating however permitting time for susceptible moments to bloom. It was dreadfully unlucky that through the tender fadeout, somebody (presumably in safety) simply needed to radio a workers member someplace within the foyer or close to the again of the home who had forgotten to show down a walkie-talkie, crackling harsh noise throughout the beautiful ending. Was one thing actually so vital that it couldn’t anticipate the efficiency to unfold? Maybe ICE brokers have been threatening to invade the constructing to deport Elgar for his string-drenched orchestration? Even worse, the radio noise occurred once more a number of moments later, nicely after Yamada had patiently held the silence for an additional pause between actions earlier than beginning the finale. Even when there was an emergency, it might have been dealt with extra discreetly. Again within the days when the tyrant George Szell dominated in Cleveland, such goings-on by the workers would have been met with sackings. I’m not saying that needs to be the fashionable response however, goodness, it confirmed a startling disrespect to the performers and viewers members.
Regardless, Yamada rapidly drew everybody’s focus again into the Brahmsian battle that erupts within the finale, alternating turbulent struggles with striding bravado. By the point the primary motion’s noble introductory theme fought its method to the highest to emerge in a full blaze of glory, the large power of the piece was unstoppable. Yamada drove it house with an exhilarating sprint to the top, bringing the viewers to its ft. Yamada requested the orchestra to face part by part for bows – a becoming transfer for a bit that could be a exercise, a veritable symphonic concerto for orchestra.
The Japanese conductor, who’s presently music director of the Metropolis of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and creative and music director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, supported Italian pianist Francesco Piemontesi with equal magnificence and a focus in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Twenty-Fifth Piano Concerto. Probably the most aggressively good of Mozart’s solo keyboard concerti, the piece can sound relentless if not tempered with poise. Piemontesi was a welcome information due to his outstanding skill to seize the fleeting shadows of late Mozart, which he demonstrated a decade in the past when he performed the Twenty-Seventh Concerto with the Clevelanders through the Blossom Music Competition.
Many pianists can play with brilliance, however Piemontesi has a capability to form shiny scales and roulades in such a means that he captures Mozart’s fleeting shadows. How he manages to do that with out shedding the form and move of such passages is a miracle, but it surely demonstrates how hypersensitive he’s to the shifting moods of music. Piemontesi notably savors factors of transition, whether or not or not it’s in or out of the quasi-militaristic fanfares of the primary motion, or the breathtaking pauses of the Andante. That motion was arguably nearer to an adagio than a flowing andante, however it’s exhausting to argue with the spell forged by such music-making, and the finale proved delightfully poised. The viewers response was sturdy and provoked an encore: the sluggish motion from Mozart’s Piano Sonata No.12, given with an virtually Chopinesque bittersweetness.
Mark Sebastian Jordan
