CLEVELAND, Ohio – Music may not be the primary objective of the Cleveland Orchestra’s annual Gala, but it certainly isn’t an afterthought, either.
Case in point: this year’s event, Saturday night, which saw both the orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra Chorus not only entertaining their biggest supporters but also filling Severance Music Center with sounds worthy of a subscription evening.
In terms of its stated goal, the Gala was an unqualified triumph, raising over $2 million for education and community engagement initiatives. Meanwhile, on the musical front, the orchestra was every bit as successful, easily charming the crowd without the aid of a star guest soloist.
There was a star guest composer, however. Allison Loggins-Hull, the orchestra’s new Composer Fellow, was on hand to introduce herself and share some background about “Homeland,” her 2017 work for solo flute steeped in questions of national identity in the wake of natural disaster and political and social upheaval.
What followed was a compelling performance of the work by principal flutist Joshua Smith. Slow, haunting flutters and microtonal pushes conspired with vigorous outbursts and oblique allusions to “The Star-Spangled Banner” to put and leave the listener in a trance, occupied by questions without answers. Clearly, the next three years with Loggins-Hull in Cleveland are going to be thought-provoking.
A lot of thought also went into the orchestra’s performance of “Les Preludes,” by Liszt. Fresh off a performance of Mahler’s epic “Resurrection” Symphony, Welser-Most and the orchestra applied the same senses of drama and coherence to a similar but much shorter work. Lyricism and forward momentum abounded as the orchestra surged to a grand embrace of the thought of life after death.
Everything else Saturday night was all in good fun. Welser-Most was clearly in his element coaxing jaunty, lilting phrases out of the orchestra in “Pearls of Love,” a suite of waltzes by Josef Strauss. There also was no resisting the overture to Weber’s opera “Oberon.” Principal horn Nathaniel Silberschlag set the tone with a mellifluous solo and his colleagues followed with playing straight out of the spirit world: feisty, effervescent, and utterly charming.
The appearance of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus was a complete surprise. Late in the evening, as guests were dining, the group materialized with lit songbooks in the dress circle and offered two radiant numbers in honor of Welser-Most’s recent birthday and 20th year in Cleveland.
But it wasn’t until the third piece that patrons responded as they had earlier in the evening, by standing. “America the Beautiful” was an offering to all, and all accepted the gift warmly.
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