Cleveland Orchestra guested the Promps 2014.

Cleveland Orchestra at Promps, London, foto Henning Høholt, 2014

by Henning Høholt

LONDON/GREAT BRITAIN: The famouse Cleveland Orchestra guested the Promps 2014 with two evenings where music by Johannes Brahms was in the lead. Kulturkompasset attended the second concert 8th September, where the program was as following:

Johannes Brahms: Tragic ouverture

Jörg Wiedmann: Teufel Amour (Devil Cupid)

Johannes Brahms: Symphony no 2 in D-Major

– and as encore, one of the Hungarian Dances by Johannes Brahms.

It was a great marking of music by Johannes Brahms made by this outstanding orchestra
. Conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, The quality of the orchestra is first class. The strings has a special homogen sound, they really play abolutely together, which is extraordinary good functioning.

Bad aquestic.

Unfortunately the acustic at Royal Albert Hall is not good enough, many details and a lot of instrumental soloparts was not heard good enough, they like disappeared. So in this, Royal Albert Hall, in deed need to take care of ths problem
. It dont help through decenniers to invite the most leading orchestras in the world, and then let them work in so bad an aqustic. . Of course. I do know that I have been privilliged through some years, as I am used to the extraordinary aqustic at the new operahouse in Oslo, and to the good aqustic at Théâtre des Champs Élysées and Salle Pleyel in Paris, still that they are not as good as in Oslo.

Jörg Wiedmann, composer of Teufel Amour, entering stage (left), after the piece has been performed for the first time in Great Britain. 8.9.2014. bu Cleveland Orchestra,Foto Henning Høholt.
Jörg Widmann´s Teufel Amour, – Devil Cupid,  A symphonic Hymn inspired by Schiller. According to the composer: “It has a lot of darkness and shows not only the seductive sweet side of of love, but also the tragic, stormier, rough side of love, but also the tragic, stormier, rough side of love”.“

Jörg Widmann´s Teufel Amour, – Devil Cupid, performed for the first time in UK. A symphonic Hymn inspired by Schiller. According to the composer: “It has a lot of darkness and shows not only the seductive sweet side of of love, but also the tragic, stormier, rough side of love”.  Starting carefully and not rushing in the deepest tunes in the present instruments the composer Jörg Wiedmann is building up a beautiful sensitive mood with his harmonic and in strumental cooperations including melodic percussion instruments putting on top of the of the strings laying their melodic basic on their highest tunes. Through his intereesting sound combinations he is building up an  atmosphaere of expectations, but for me it wwas it was not not clear what kond of expectations, we would reach or in what direction tis composition would move, neither where it would end up. In that was perhaps the secret from the composers side.

During the way is coming up romantic underlines, exspecially in the small soli by the first violin and in dialogue with the soloflute. The percussion part is remakrable thorough all the piece, making dramatic melodiouse effects, it is all ending up with a fantastic conclusion lead by horns and wooden blowers.

Teufel Amour, – Devil Cupid was the title ofa hymn Schiller wrote shen he was 22
. Scrapped for cash, he o

Franz Welser-Möst

ffered it to a bookseller to publish, but the man haggled about the fee, and the young poet preferred to lose the deal rather than undersell his work, which he subsequently lost. However, a friend of his  remembered a couple of short lines, and included them in a memoir more than 50 years later Sweet Cupid Linger/In melodic flight.

The fragment appealed to Jörg Widmann for its contradictions of lingering in flight, of relic and loss. For, as he has remarked: “More than anything else, love is allways twofold: heaven and hell, pleasue and pain, paradise and snake pit..
. Schiller´s version of CUpid´s flight a the heights and depths of a melodic course inspired me to compose symphonic hymn that sings of love. Even in its most diabolical shape.” 

An interesting meeting with an interesting composer
.

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