CONSIDERED OPINION OF THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA PERFORMANCE OF 4/24/08

Zoltán Kodály: Dances of Galánta. Peter Eötvös: Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra. Béla Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra. (Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Tamara Stefanovich, p.; Peter Eötvös, cond.)

In late 1940, composer Béla Bartók arrived in Cleveland. "On Dec. 1st," he wrote to his sons back in Budapest, "I set out on an 8-day tour of Cleveland and the surrounding district. Hungarians here, there and everywhere," he exclaimed. He did, however, find one source of disappointment. "The 2nd generation," he observed, "already speaks the language brokenly."

Local fans of Hungarian music might feel a similar mix of pleasure and disappointment in this weekend's Cleveland Orchestra concerts. Yes, it's an all-Hungarian mix on the bill: music of Bartók, Kodály, and visiting composer-conductor Peter Eötvös. But what's being described as "temporary muscular pain" put the kibosh on plans for Pierre-Laurent Aimard to perform Bartók's Second Piano Concerto. Hence the late addition of Kodály's Dances of Galánta to the program.

Perhaps the shuffling of material accounts for the occasionally scrappy sound of the orchestra at Thursday night's concert. There's no doubt that Eötvös knows how to conduct Dances of Galánta. It would be hard to improve upon the rhythmic flexibility and nicely judged dramatic pacing which he brings to the work. And yet a certain raggedness and some ungainly solos suggested that it might take another couple run-throughs before the interpretation really falls into place.

The same was true of Thursday's performance of the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra. An excess of gloss isn't necessarily ideal in this piece, so the earthy, buzzy growl of the lower strings at the outset of the first movement was perfectly welcome. But the subsequent muddy-sounding entrance of the trumpets was just the first of quite a few lapses that might well disappear in future performances. Fortunately, Eötvös' intimate knowledge of the work prevented technical uncertainties from dissipating its impact. His crisply paced version of the "Game of Pairs" movement captured particularly well the strange combination of playfulness and deadly seriousness you might find in, say, a championship chess match.

But the highlight of Thursday's program was undoubtedly the U.S. premiere of Eötvös' Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra. It's a marvel of engineering—though the presence of science doesn't in the least imply an absence of passion. It has the sort of impersonal and inevitable beauty you might find in Islamic arabesques, or a page of Flaubert, or the Fibonacci sequence. And, if you're a fan of just-plain-spectacular piano playing, you won't get much better than the crack team performing the Concerto: Aimard and his frequent collaborator Tamara Stefanovich.

I find the piece absolutely compelling: twenty minutes of music that you could spend a lifetime getting to know. Then again, Eötvös isn't the first Hungarian to capture seemingly inexhaustible complexity in a creation of modest scale. It was a Hungarian architect, after all, who invented the Rubik's Cube.

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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