For Cleveland Orchestra, It’s Beethoven (and Freedom) to the Rescue

The Cleveland Orchestra showed up at Carnegie Hall this week without a star. When the music director Franz Welser-Möst planned the ensemble’s two-night visit to New York, the opening concert, on Tuesday, was to be headlined by the soprano Asmik Grigorian. A volcanic presence on European stages who rarely makes it to the United States, Grigorian would have been a major box-office draw. Then came news that she was pulling out for unspecified personal reasons.

Time to break out the emergency rations of Beethoven.

The remaining rump of the Clevelanders’ program for Tuesday, the Suite from Janacek’s “From the House of the Dead,” based on Dostoyevsky’s account of life in a Russian prison colony, was joined by Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and, for good measure, his “Leonore” Overture No. 3.

A crowd-pleasing solution to a marketing headache? A repertory staple musicians can shine in without too much rehearsal? Not at all. The new program was “a chance to say something important about our world today,” Welser-Möst wrote in a program statement that referred, smartly but vaguely, to people’s “fight for freedom everywhere.”

Without naming specifics, Welser-Möst explained that the Janacek was a testament to “human dignity” in “desolate circumstances.” Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 traced a progression “from darkness to light,” he added, while the overture, written for Beethoven’s political prison break opera “Fidelio,” represented the “greatest music about freedom ever written.” Far from being a stop gap, the new program created what Welser-Möst called “a profound statement” that was sure to “resonate deeply” with New Yorkers. (No similar claims were made for Wednesday’s program, which consisted of Stravinsky’s “Pétrouchka” and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.)

The resulting concert on Tuesday was invigorating and full of ravishing playing, as was the performance the next night. But if there was any profound truth to be gleaned from the double helping of Beethoven served alongside Janacek’s dazzling suite, it was only that the Fifth and the “Leonore” overture provide ready-made templates for struggle narratives ending in triumph. Just whose struggle and what is being overcome — I’m guessing that Gaza, Ukraine and the state of American democracy are among them — remain open to interpretation.

In fairness, the Cleveland Orchestra has never relied on provocative or politically minded programming to earn its devoted fan base and superlative-studded reviews. In his 23 years at the helm, Welser-Möst has fine-tuned this storied ensemble into an elegant, cohesive and keenly responsive engine. Other American orchestras have struggled to define their role in society as they fret over accusations that their branch of the arts is reactionary and socially irrelevant. The Cleveland Orchestra’s image may be conservative — a guardian of a particular European tradition — but it’s a well-defined luxury brand that delivers outstanding value.

Watching the musicians perform on the same stage that had just hosted the Vienna Philharmonic, I was struck by the similarities between the two institutions. Some of it had to do with the Cleveland Orchestra’s mellow and thoughtfully blended brass section, which stands apart from the more metallic and muscular playing in most American orchestras. The Cleveland string section physically moves much like its Austrian counterpart, with entire blocks of players bobbing and weaving as in a chamber setting where the whole torso helps signal expressive intent to the group. Especially in the last movement of the Tchaikovsky, it was a pleasure watching the violinists sway and dance as a bloc.

And though the ensemble is studded with stars, a spirit of collaborative forbearance infuses solos. The guest concertmaster Jan Mracek was almost self-effacingly light-footed in the virtuosic cadenzas Janacek writes for the solo violin. John Clouser’s bassoon simmered with refinement, especially in the Tchaikovsky. And my ear kept being drawn to the uncommonly dark-hued sound of Joshua Smith’s flute, which lent unexpected gravitas to an instrument that typically provides light birdlike relief whenever it rises above the orchestral texture.

From the podium, Welser-Möst projected discreet authority, conducting with an economy of gesture that highlighted the easy symbiosis between him and the orchestra. In the Beethoven symphony, he was especially attentive to transitional moments, including the exponential crescendo that flares up at the end of the third movement and leads into the explosive final Allegro.

Beethoven demands utmost restraint from the orchestra in the bars leading up to that surge, as the music rises in pitch without yet gaining volume. At Carnegie Hall, that passage came across as almost claustrophobically repressive, the eventual uncorking of sound and energy seeming to burst out like pent-up frustration. It was one of those musical thrills that might have made Beethoven’s Fifth such a safe bet with audiences of all kinds. But to a politically inclined listener, it could also sound like a tipping point in a mass movement leading to revolution.