New music in Cleveland.
Well, in the Plain Dealer, that is.
Now that, as OC wrote last Friday, Don Rosenberg has been "reassigned", *wink wink nudge nudge*, and he won't cover the Cleveland Orchestra again, because he's a meanie, the paper is free to hail the new boss (aka Franz Welser Möst, who is also the old boss, only Rosenberg didn't care).
L00k! The new critic is in charge now:
"Tonight at Severance Hall, as the applause dies down and the audience takes a collective breath, a tall, slender Austrian will walk to the podium and lift his baton to begin the next decade in the history of the Cleveland Orchestra."
By the way, the newspaper’s publisher is also on the orchestra’s board. That's, like, a crazy coincidence.
But then, if one is fascinated by big batons (and by those tall slender Austrians who wave the batons), more power to them! Especially if the same tall slender Austrians are friends with your boss!
One of the very few hilarious things that happened re: the whole mess, is that some people in the US seem to be under the impression that everytime Frankly Worse Than Möst took his orchestra over to Europe, critics had a tendency to cheer like crazy, unlike gloomy old Don Rosenberg back in Ohio.
Let's hear it from august Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading, most authoritative daily newspaper:
"Franz Welser-Möst, at present time the music director, doesn't unleash the horsepower, as they say in the slang of auto racing. A good, solid conductor who comes in prepared. Maybe one day he'll be as authoritative as Jansons. But he conducts Bruckner's Ninth fastidiously, without even approaching the metaphysical heights of this convoluted masterpiece. To have such a work preceded in the program by a barely cute work such as the Suite from Powder Her Face by Thomas Adès is simply ridiculous."
One year ago:
March 18, 2007: Nozze di Figaro, Opernhaus, Zurich
"The disappointing one is Franz Welser-Möst,
young music director of the Swiss theater. Flashy debut, as it has become tradition, then a long hiatus to study and analyze, then the comeback as more reliable conductor on the podium of important orchestras (in Cleveland, too) where his qualities can emerge. Such is his resume. But in Zurich he conducts a routine, generic Figaro: singers and orchestra proceed side by side, but from him much more is required."
How do you say "meh" in Italian?
Anyway, reader's request: if you're in Cleveland, print this out, make some stickers, t-shirts, whatevs. You have OC's permission. Thus spake Opera Chic. You may go now.