In a recent interview Pinchas Steinberg likened the Cleveland Orchestra to a Rolls-Royce, and apt analogy for an ensemble with a powerful engine under a shiny musical hood.
Zachary Lewis, THE PLAIN DEALER, 4 December 2010
But if the orchestra is a luxury car, then Steinberg’s concert was no mere jaunt. Rather, it was a thorough evaluation, with a large symphonic staple, a challenging concerto and a brilliant overture putting the vehicle through its paces. What’s more, all systems performed beautifully.
Steinberg set forth his intentions with Nicolai’s overture to “The Merry Wives of Windsor”. That he’s an artist of great precision and animation was immediately clear, and the sprightly, vivid performance quickly whetted the appetite, as overtures should.
In the same interview as the Rolls-Royce comparison, Steinberg said his goal with the orchestra this week was to present performances impossible to take in passively. It’s is a mission he can consider accomplished yet again.
Mahler’s Symphony n. 1 is this orchestra’s bread and butter, part of the canon the group has been groomed over decades to play especially well. Still, Steinberg was firmly in command, leading from memory a keenly articulate performance marked equally by emotional and dramatic intensity. Just as Mahler himself frequently recasts the same music, so did Steinberg find ways to endow repeated sections with fresh significance. And if Mahler in the first movement asks for a natural unfolding, he got it from Steinberg, in a reading notable for its organic accretion of force.
Try as he might, even a listener prepared for the last movement’s opening outburst was still caught off guard by the raw severity of the boom unleashed by Steinberg and the orchestra. Yet if that marked peak volume, the rest of the movement also entailed heights of tenderness and lyricism.
It was Mahler at his most mercurial, and by the end, Steinberg had guaranteed nothing was left in the tank.