Yefim Bronfman and the Cleveland Orchestra Give Sterling Performance at the Van Wezel

SARASOTA -- While the Republicans were debating in Tampa, the Cleveland Orchestra was providing world class entertainment at the Van Wezel in Sarasota, Monday night.  The evening featured a performance of the second Brahms piano concerto by Yefim Bronfman, considered one of the world’s finest concert pianists.

It was the first of four concerts this week in Florida that the orchestra is performing with Bronfman.  In addition to the Brahms, which opened the program, there were works by Smetana and Shostakovich.
The Brahms concerto, one of the staples of the classical repertoire, was composed when Brahms was at the peak of his creative powers and completed in 1881. It was premiered by the composer and met with immediate success. It has tuneful melodies, wonderful solo parts for piano and the orchestra players, and gypsy music-like orchestral passages. Often, it is the piano accompanying the orchestra, rather than the reverse as in most concertos. 

The familiar plaintive horn solo that opens the work was played with good form and a precursor of more fine horn playing in this work that has a number of evocative passages for horn solo.

The piano, which makes a reserved entrance following the horn, was played with restraint, by Bronfman.  Noted for his percussive style in which he gets the most out of his pedals, Bronfman used his trademark power-playing only at crucial junctures, notably in the final movement. His precision work on the keyboard was evident throughout, another characteristic of his playing.

Yefim Bronfman

Restraint and sensitivity also would be a good description of the Conductor Franz Weiser-Most’s interpretation.  Weiser-Most, who is Austrian, has been conductor of the orchestra since 2002 and also is currently General Music Director of the Vienna State Opera. His understated reading gave richness to the sweet and poignant opening of the cellos in third movement.

Unusual for concertos, this work has four movements, and the last is the most buoyant section. It allowed Bronfman to display the full power of his keyboard work to cap off a virtuoso performance.

The second half of the concert comprised a seldom performed tone poem by Smetana, From Bohemia’s Forests and Fields. I wished instead it could have been The Moldau. It had some tuneful moments, reminiscent of Dvorak’s later nature tone poems, but overall it is a rather uneven work.

The featured work on the second half was Shostakovich’s sixth symphony, a work in three movements, uncharacteristic for symphonies that generally have four. Another seldom performed work, it occupies a position between the composer’s two most well-known symphonies, numbers five and seven.  The work had snatches of music reminiscent of both of the others, its adagio or largo, tense and dramatic like the adagio in the fifth, though not nearly as powerful in resolution, and its use of snare drums and march sections that are reminiscent of the militant seventh symphony.  Especially rousing and satisfying was the work’s final movement, which reminded me of scherzos in the work of Prokoviev.

There were some empty seats, more than I expected for such illustrious performers. With an audience comprised predominantly of seniors, it might behoove the Van Wezel to do some outreach to youth to attract them to classical concerts.

Another matter, which surprised and annoyed this reviewer, was the clapping at the end of the first and second movements of the Brahms.  We all know, or should know, that it is inappropriate to clap during a classical piece until it is finished.  Only in opera is it customary to clap or shout, “Bravo,” after a well-sung aria. It surprised me that an audience so advanced in years failed to observe or recognize this.