Concert programs beginning with an all-string orchestra seem to be en vogue in the United States. After the Philadelphia Orchestra, which opened the Elbphilharmonie season on Tuesday with excerpts from Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout” in a version for strings, the Cleveland Orchestra now started at the ProArte concert on Wednesday with three pieces from the “Lyric Suite” for string orchestra by Alban Berg.
The strings of the Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School do not always sound melodic or like a string orchestra, but sometimes like a horde of bugs crawling through dead leaves. The strings of the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, designed the sounds, which, following Arnold Schönberg’s twelve-tone technique, wallow once through the chromatic scale, into an exciting musical walk through open, wide worlds of associations.
After the 18-minute first part, there was a break. Afterwards, Anton Bruckner’s 9th Symphony could be experienced more than just heard. Welser-Möst masterfully designed the rich, multi-layered masterpiece with the Cleveland Orchestra, which of course appeared completely for this purpose – unfortunately in front of a good third of the empty seats, a picture that is still completely unusual for the Elbphilharmonie.
The second concert of the orchestra from Cleveland with works by Rihm and Schubert as part of the Elbphilharmonie Summer on September 1 is sold out. Despite the strong interpretation of the last Bruckner symphony, Welser-Möst did not manage to nestle his orchestra into the Elbphilharmonie acoustics quite as elegantly as the previous evening with the conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin – which of course did not dampen the applause.