Asher Fisch portrait 6 (photo credit Chris Gonz).JPG
Conductor Asher Fisch made his Cleveland Orchestra debut Saturday at Blossom Music Center with a program of works by Wagner, Mendelssohn and Beethoven.
(Chris Gonz)
The Cleveland Orchestra's program Saturday at Blossom Music Center could not have been more conventional. Neither, though, could it have been much more satisfying.
Led on that occasion by conductor Asher Fisch, the orchestra pleased an ample crowd on a perfect evening with distinguished accounts of works straight from the core of its repertoire. The only ones who might have been disappointed were those seeking musical adventure.
Not that Fisch's Cleveland debut lacked boldness. On the contrary. While Fisch, principal conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and lead guest conductor of Seattle Opera, evinced no radical views or eccentricities, his performances were high on zest and drama.
Fans of Beethoven's iconic Symphony No. 7 had particular cause for delight. Throughout, Fischer drew from the orchestra first-rate playing, and in certain respects, the conductor's approach to the score was remarkable.
In the slow movement, arguably the heart of the piece, Fischer elicited one of the softest, most truly lyrical renditions of the material this listener has heard in some time. Even if only half the textural nuance present in the strings came across to patrons on the lawn, for them, it still must have been a rich performance indeed.
And that was just one quarter of the symphony. The remaining three movements as treated by Fisch were every bit as strikingly communicative, abundant in shape, logic and momentum. The robust, colorful contributions of the horns and woodwinds, too, surely reached the furthest corners of the facility.
Guest violinist Isabelle Faust manifested a markedly different though no less welcome character in another score from the musical bedrock. In contrast to Fisch's forthright, extroverted Beethoven, her intimate, exceptionally refined account of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto stood out as almost Baroque in sensibility.
Here are a few of the things Faust's performance wasn't: melodramatic, showy, technically careless. Rather, the violinist, known worldwide for her recordings, imbued the piece with genuine feeling and ensured that every note spoke with pristine clarity, including the highest pitches and fast stretches that with so many artists simply register as blurs.
Similarly eye-opening were her accounts of the Andante and Allegretto. Perhaps in no other hands has the former sounded so petite and yet pierced so cleanly, or the last movement tugged the listener along with such sleek, seductive phrasing.
Incredibly, this display of mastery and comfort with the orchestra marked Faust's Cleveland debut. Let it not also mark her finale. Where she belongs next is Severance Hall.
A noted conductor of opera from a house known for its Wagner, Fisch began Saturday with one of his staples, the Overture to "The Flying Dutchman." Alas, the impression he left with this shorter piece was somewhat equivocal.
Balance was not the hallmark of this "Dutchman," and an overly flexible tempo dissipated some of the music's impetus. Still, in Fisch's rendering, the effects of the music's great peaks were undiminished, and with the horns in top shape at the outset, listeners were fully primed for the tale the score was meant to precede.
Much the same can now be said about Fisch himself. His program may have occupied the safest of musical territory, but if his performance Saturday was the overture to his work in Cleveland, one looks forward very much to the rest of the piece.