Today the Cleveland Orchestra got down to the business of music making in their tour of the Canary Islands, Spain, and Paris.

The Canary Islands concerts are part of the Festival de Musica de Canarias, which places the Cleveland Orchestra in fairly distinguished company: the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Like the Cleveland Orchestra, most of these ensembles are presenting two programs in Las Palmas.

This morning's rehearsal was the first time some of them had seen Las Palmas's Alfredo Kraus Auditorium. It's less than two years old, and the architecture is striking. The back wall of the stage is glass with a view of the ocean behind. But the orchestra players were more concerned with its acoustics than its appearance. The hall is very live, with a two-second reverberation time. That's much more live than Severance Hall, so they made some adjustments in rehearsal.

The musicians hoped that the sound would deaden out moderately when the hall was full of people. In fact it was literally full tonight, sold out.

The hall's live acoustics were still there, though somewhat muted, and they added a sheen to soloist Frank Peter Zimmermann's light tone in the Beethoven Violin Concerto. The Cleveland Orchestra is famous for precise playing (they listen to each other), and that helped their sound in the live hall. Dohnanyi kept his tempos moderate, especially in the middle movement. The audience applauded with tremendous enthusiasm until Zimmermann and Dohnanyi had come back for 5 or 6 bows, then launched into a European style rhythmic clapping. That was good for two more bows, and Zimmermann gave them the Paganini 13th caprice as a solo encore.

Alas, the hall was not so kind to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Dohnanyi's tempos and articulation may work in Severance Hall, but in this hall the fast, rhythmically complex passages tangled in the ceiling and came out overly loud and jumbled. Sections that should have sounded uneasy and expectant would have been better described as lethargic. The trumpet stabs tore through the orchestral fabric as Stravinsky surely intended, but Dohnanyi had other instruments playing with a tone that was sometimes too warm. Sometimes this music needs a cold, even brittle, tone.

The applause for Stravinsky seemed less enthusiastic, but that might have been a comment on the music itself -- remember, Rite of Spring is the piece which caused a riot at its premiere in Paris. Nevertheless, the reception qualified the listeners for an encore. The orchestra gave them Dvorak's 8th Slavonic Dance -- then after another four bows, Dohnanyi launched them into the Prokoviev Classical Symphony finale at a breakneck tempo, significantly faster than at the morning rehearsal and one of the briskest tempos I've ever heard for this music.

Tomorrow the orchestra plays Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin Suite, Schnittke's (K)Ein Sommernachtstraum, and Schubert's Ninth Symphony in the same auditorium.

David Roden
WKSU Assistant Program Director