Cleveland Orchestra Offers Defiant Hope at Carnegie

Welser-Most Conducts Speaking Instruments

By: Susan Hall - Mar 21, 2025

Franz Welser-Möst, who will have directed the Cleveland Orchestra longer than any other conductor, arrived at Carnegie Hall this week to bring us hope through music.

Some composers speak more directly about the subject of their compositions than others. Some musicians take up a cause. In programming for a quick change, after a noted European soprano canceled her US appearances, Welser-Möst chose pieces that comment on our times.

Some New York managers of important music venues have used proclamations about Ukraine to cover up flawed administrative and artistic practices—and not incidentally, to advance the careers of family members. Welser-Möst, however, is a heartfelt spokesperson for our troubled times and the challenges that right-wing politics create for people around the world. He chose Beethoven and Janá?ek to highlight the perils of tyranny and offer hope, even in C Minor, a key in which Beethoven chose to portray his heroic side.

There are answers. There are paths to follow. And music, surely, has a place in creating a better world.

Welser-Möst’s personal favorite, Beethoven's Leonore Overture to the opera Fidelio, concluded the first evening’s program. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony opened the evening. Both pieces merge the personal and political. The deafness that encroached on Beethoven’s ability to hear the music swirling in his head is dramatized. Likewise, his plea for freedom—something to which he had a lifelong commitment—is portrayed. He would represent himself as heroic in the key of C Minor.

An orchestral version of Leoš Janá?ek’s From the House of the Dead was, for this listener, the height of the first evening. Escape from tyranny is possible, optimism is not unfounded, and even the most flawed human contains a spark of divinity.

Janá?ek’s interest in speech as music means his approach is direct. His music is often compact and rhythmic, expressing the sounds and rhythms of the Czech language.

As Welser-Möst conducts, the orchestra speaks. Sound effects are integral to the work: the shackles worn by prisoners are performed on chains by a percussionist.

Speech enriches and fertilizes Janá?ek’s musical language, though never obliterating its tonal roots. The result is fresh, appealing, and accessible. Passionate lyricism reveals a common humanity.

The orchestra produces musical lines that are smooth. We are grateful for the biting da-da-da-dums when they erupt. Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, on the program for the second evening, also tempted fate. Notes quietly slip into an emphatic phrase and pleasingly interrupt a steady flow.

Tchaikovsky's persecution was personal. As a gay man, he referred to his homosexuality with an "X" and was forced into a marriage with a woman. Yet, in the confusion of the Fifth Symphony, he triumphs—at least in his music, if not in his life.

The music is the message at Carnegie Hall. And a strong, compelling message it is when the Cleveland Orchestra performs under Welser-Möst.