CONSIDERED OPINION OF THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA CONCERT OF 11/23/07

Carl Maria von Weber: Overture to Oberon. Felix Mendelssohn: Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Strings in D minor. Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93. (William Preucil, v.; Jon Kimura Parker, p.; Pinchas Steinberg, cond.)

"Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows," says Shakespeare's Trinculo. And there are few things more miserable than war. So it was that, in 1943, the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet recorded one of Gospel music's strangest artifacts: the tune "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'." The exigencies of the Second World War had aligned America with Stalin in the fight against Hitler, the Golden Gate Quartet duly chimed in with catchy lyrics praising the Soviet dictator: "Then that bear smacked the Fuhrer / With a mighty armored paw / And Adolf broke all records / Running backwards to Krakaw."

On the other side of the ocean, Dmitri Shostakovich continued the dangerous ideological dance that to this day leaves us confused about his precise relationship to Stalin's murderous regime. He wrote his share of patriotic numbers that seem, in retrospect, as glib as the Golden Gaters'. But immediately after Stalin died, Shostakovich set to work on his Tenth Symphony, its scherzo a dark portrait of the dictator.

Friday evening's Cleveland Orchestra performance of the Tenth, led by Pinchas Steinberg, was adequate, but never really first-rate. Steinberg has a nice feel for Shostakovich's scoring, and he's not afraid to abet the composer at the work's most vociferous moments. But he's far less effective at maintaining tension during quiet passages. And so more than a few key segments of the work fail to bear their part of the Tenth's emotional weight. Steinberg's reading of the symphony is at times bracing, at times sonically dazzling. But the work's best renditions-Herbert von Karajan's pair of Deutsche Grammophon recordings, for example-offer experiences of exponentially greater intensity.

Nonetheless, Steinberg's Shostakovich was far more satisfying than the first half of the program. The Adagio sostenuto introduction to Weber's Oberon Overture came perilously close to total inertness. William Preucil and Jon Kimura Parker, meanwhile, did little to make a case for the 14-year-old Felix Mendelssohn's Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Strings. Preucil's playing was sometimes anemic, sometimes cloying. And the performance in general sounded lethargic-particularly in the opening movement. By the time Parker finally contributed a few energetic outbursts to the concluding Allegro molto, the effort merely sounded out of place. If anything, Friday's performance emphasized the work's essential thinness. The youthful Mendelssohn, it seemed, had taken fifteen minutes of solid musical material and stretched it into a thirty-five minute concerto.

Of course, in such loose dealings with time, Mendelssohn had far less to lose than Shostakovich's contemporaries did. One joke from the grim days of Stalinism had three prisoners in the gulag comparing notes on why they were there. "I am here because I always got to work five minutes late," said the first, "and they accused me of sabotage." "I kept getting to work five minutes early," said the second, "and they accused me of spying." "And I," said the third, "got to work on time every single day. They accused me of owning a Western watch."

Jerome Crossley for WCLV 104/9.

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.

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