CONSIDERED OPINION OF THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA CONCERT OF 3/6/08

Olivier Messiaen: Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. Gustav Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde. (Jonas Kaufmann, ten.; Christopher Maltman, bar.; Franz Welser-Möst, cond.)

"Don't go overboard with the drinking" was the safe-boating slogan promoted in connection with the 2000 America's Cup. Had this bit of wisdom been current in eighth-century China, the writer Li T'ai-Po might have lived to compose a few more poems. It is said that he died when he went out boating in an inebriated state. He tried to embrace the reflection of the moon in the water, fell over the boat's edge, and was drowned.

The Afterword to Hans Bethge's The Chinese Flute recounts a cheerier version of the story in which the poet is carried off to paradise by dolphins. Bethge's anthology of Chinese poetry was fantastically popular in its day. And Gustav Mahler used its rather liberal translations of Li T'ai-Po and others as the basic material for his late masterpiece Das Lied von der Erde.

It's a hybrid song-cycle and symphony, as simultaneously listenable and complex, intimate and wide-ranging, invigorating and heartbreaking as anything Mahler wrote. He designated it "a Symphony for Tenor, Contralto (or Baritone) and Orchestra." And while you most often hear the tenor-contralto combination, Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra offer Das Lied this weekend with two male soloists: tenor Jonas Kaufmann and baritone Christopher Maltman. Kaufmann has an excellent voice, though his singing Thursday evening was a trifle disengaged. Maltman is a more engrossing performer. Listen, for example, to the delicacy with which he sings the second movement's lines about the flowers' evanescent fragrance. You might, on occasion, wish he had a bit more power at the bottom of his range. But there's no doubting his involvement with the piece. Thursday's version of the opening movement seemed oddly episodic, but for the remainder of the work Welser-Möst struck a nice balance between maintaining the music's large-scale shape and highlighting Mahler's quick-changing, often phantasmagoric scoring.

Welser-Möst brought a similar sense of continuity to Olivier Messiaen's Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. The obvious point of comparison here is Pierre Boulez's 1993 recording of the work with the Cleveland Orchestra. From time to time Boulez elicits more precise playing. But note the lyricism which Welser-Möst brings to the "Presque lent" sections of the second movement and the nice sense of musical line he maintains in the last section of movement four. Cleveland's lucky to have hosted both versions.

It's a pity such a fine program was marred, for both musicians and audience members, by an annoying high-pitched whistle coming from somewhere in the auditorium. Welser-Möst twice interrupted Das Lied between movements to request that the unknown owner of the malfunctioning device silence it. Alas, these polite tactics only succeeded for about thirty seconds. A less diplomatic conductor might have been tempted to appropriate a line from Ken Russell's film Mahler, in which the composer sends away an irritating journalist by remarking: "Why don't you do what I do to keep the New York Philharmonic in time: beat it!"

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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