Word: dohnanyi
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...Cleveland Orchestra spoiled its audience last Wednesday: it filled Symphony Hall with a huge and absolutely tight sound. The BankBoston Celebrity Series concert took place in front of a packed and wide-eyed crowd, visibly impressed by what Christoph von Dohnanyi and his orchestra could...
Throughout "Ganymed," Dohnanyi kept a close eye on Baer, and so achieved the evening's fullest blend of vocal and orchestral sonority. The ascending melodic and harmonic figures of the music succeeded in evoking Goethe's poem about the beautiful boy snatched up into heaven. Baer and the strings went high and stayed there for an excitingly long time...
...Standchen" should have been the prettiest of the set, but Dohnanyi's tempo was too fast. It made the song's tenderness debonair. But the last song, "An Schwager Kronos," was perfect. Baer kept close to the text, and the orchestra's playing was wonderfully subdued, until the triumphant final fanfare, which sounded better in the horns than it ever could on a piano. The music was so, compelling that it more than made up for the few previous disappointments. Baer got the loud and abundant applause he deserved...
...Cleveland would not have achieved its current prestige without Dohnanyi, who arrived in 1984 after having worked his way up the traditional German opera-house ladder. Beginning with the Frankfurt Opera, where he was Georg Solti's assistant, Dohnanyi spent time in Lubeck, Cologne and finally his adopted hometown of Hamburg before heading to the shores of Lake Erie. He has ended any doubts about his abilities as a symphonic conductor with performances that combine Szell's rigor, Boulez's unerring ear and a controlled interpretative fire...
What finally explains Cleveland's eminence is the happy intangibles that previously elevated Stokowski and Philadelphia, Karajan and Berlin, and Solti and Chicago to musical supremacy: leadership, talent, discipline and desire, perhaps especially the last. "For musicians there's not much else to do here," Dohnanyi points out. "There's no opera, there's no freelancing; you don't come to Cleveland to enjoy the weather. You come here to play in the Cleveland Orchestra." And play they do, better than anybody...