CONSIDERED OPINION OF THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA CONCERT OF 10/4/07

Debussy: Ibéria. John Adams: Guide to Strange Places. Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No 7 in A major, Op. 92. (Franz Welser-Möst, cond.)

The title of John Adams' Guide to Strange Places was suggested by a book the composer found in a French farmhouse: the Guide de la Provence Mystérieuse, a volume in the Guides Noirs series. It's not something you'd pick up at the AAA; a Baedeker's, rather, for connoisseurs of the bizarre. As you page through, your curiosity is piqued by hundreds of strange, often sinister illustrations: six rats tied together at their tails…a spiky-shelled monster with the head of a lion…a pair of what appear to be flaming two-by-fours plunging toward an early modern village. If your trip to Provence won't be complete without learning about the "escargots énigmatiques"—or "mysterious snails"—of Bonnieux, then the Guide Noir might be the book for you.

It's a peculiar source of inspiration, but the orchestral piece it prompted is as powerful as anything Adams has written. Guide to Strange Places, performed by Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra on this weekend's Severance Hall concerts, is the work of an artist in absolute control of his materials—a masterpiece of design and orchestration. Its unerring dramatic pacing ensures that you're captivated for every one of its twenty-five minutes. Some passages of the work remind me of Adams' Road Movies. Like the third movement of that 1995 composition for violin and piano, Strange Places effortlessly incorporates distinctive American gestures into a texture of frenetic urgency.

Thursday's concert sandwiched the dark, disquieting Strange Places between two brightly polychromatic orchestral standards. Franz Welser-Möst's interpretation of Claude Debussy's Ibéria is in some respects reminiscent of the Cleveland Orchestra's superb recording of the work under Pierre Boulez. It relies less on general atmosphere than on carefully delineated orchestral textures. At its best, as in the movement "Les parfums de la nuit," Welser-Möst's Ibéria resembles his version of Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel: it emphasizes the score's unfolding logic, instead of treating it as simply a sequence of colorful individual events.

Welser-Möst's version of the Beethoven Seventh is still more impressive. He takes the opening movement at a nicely crisp tempo and unerringly builds the energy of its development section. At the end of the first movement, Welser-Möst leaps into the succeeding Allegretto with barely a pause. The effect is startling. As in a cinematic dissolve, the coda's uninhibited revelers are replaced by the wraith-like formal dancers of the second movement.

In the Seventh's concluding Allegro con brio, Welser-Möst falls into the "pedal to the metal" school of interpretation. It's not an approach that I normally espouse, for reasons that begin with Beethoven's own indications in the score. But Welser-Möst makes it work. Does it seem wildly inebriated? Even a bit unhinged? Maybe. But then, this is the symphony Wagner dubbed "the apotheosis of the dance." And, as Cicero observed, "Almost no man dances when he's sober—unless perhaps he's insane."

Considered Opinions is WCLV's program that reviews performances by Cleveland-area music ensembles. Commentator Jerome Crossley offers an informed and witty perspective on performances by groups that include the Cleveland Orchestra, Opera Cleveland, and Red {an orchestra}. Considered Opinions typically airs at 9.45 a.m., 12.20 p.m., and 5.20 p.m. the Friday following a Cleveland Orchestra concert, and it repeats at 9.45 a.m. on Saturday. Other air-times depend on the schedule of the ensembles reviewed.

Now, you needn't miss a single edition of Considered Opinions. Subscribe to the program as a WCLV podcast, and every installment of this fascinating series will be delivered automatically to your iTunes or other feed aggregator! Or, if you prefer, you can access the texts of older editions of Considered Opinions in the Considered Opinions Archive.