Speaker 1:

Where to?

Speaker 2:

Carnegie Hall please.

Speaker 3:

Your ticket. Enjoy the show.

Speaker 4:

Your tickets please. Follow me.

Jeff Spurgeon:

In New York City there are lots of ways to get to Carnegie Hall, the subway, a taxi, a walk down 57th Street. You have just found another way to get to America's most famous home for classical music. Welcome to Carnegie Hall Live. This broadcast series brings you Carnegie Hall concerts by some of the world's most celebrated artists, and you hear the performances exactly as they happen. You are part of the audience sharing the experience of music making at Carnegie Hall. I'm Jeff Spurgeon.

Clemency Burton:

And I'm Clemency Burton-Hill and we are here to share with you a couple of Carnegie Hall beginnings tonight. One, the Gala Opening Concert of the 2019-2020 season; and two, the start of Carnegie's a year long commemoration of the 250th birthday of Beethoven. Both of those beginnings happen in just a few minutes and a concert by the Cleveland Orchestra, their music director, Franz Welser-Most, and three truly great soloists, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, cellist Lynn Harrell, and pianist Yefim Bronfman.

Jeff Spurgeon:

They'll play Beethoven's triple Concerto for those three instruments and orchestra. Anne-Sophie Mutter will also play one of Beethoven's violin romances, and we'll hear the Cleveland Orchestra play a suite of music from Richard Strauss's opera, Der Rosenkavalier. And the overture to Otto Nicolai's opera, The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Clemency Burton:

Carnegie Hall Live is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts on the web@arts.gov. Additional support is provided in part by the Howard Gilman foundation and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City council.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Founded just over a century ago, the Cleveland Orchestra has for many decades consistently been on the shortlist of the greatest symphony orchestras, not just in the United States but in the world. Since 2002, conductor Franz Welser-Most has been the music director in Cleveland. And just last month, his contract was extended to 2027.

Clemency Burton:

That will make Welser-Most the longest tenured conductor in Cleveland's history, outlasting the legendary George Szell by just one year. We asked Welser-Most if he ever imagined that he'd be in Cleveland this long.

Welser-Most:

Absolutely not. First of all, let me say Cleveland is a beautiful city. It has a sort of bad reputation going back to the 60s, but especially in the last four or five years, the city had a huge comeback, you see it in the architecture and restaurant scene and so on.

Welser-Most:

When I signed my contract in June '99, I thought, "Okay, if this works well, I will stay for 10 years." And now I'm already in my 18th season and signed this contract extension. I have to say, I've conducted all the major orchestras in this world, I've never experienced better working circumstances. Everyone comes 100% prepared to the first rehearsal, you start at a different level. Yeah, it's a happy marriage and I never, ever would have thought that I would stay there for 25 years.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Most is a native of Austria, so he is steeped from birth in the European musical tradition. But in Cleveland, he is now also considering the American musical future.

Welser-Most:

When you're the leader of an institution, you have to look at the bigger picture. Demographics are changing, and we know by 2050 that white people will be a minority in this country, so we're looking at that and saying, "where does the institution go in 10, 50, 100 years?" It will look very different. The way we recruitment musicians, the way we teach them, the way we seek audiences... And we have been very successful, I mean, we have the youngest audience of any of the American orchestras, 20% of our audience is under the age of 25.

Clemency Burton:

Younger audiences aside, bringing true diversity to symphony orchestras is a challenge almost everywhere, and for many complex reasons. Franz Welser-Most says work to address that is underway in Cleveland.

Welser-Most:

We're starting next year this academy for Latins and African American musicians. And for instance, our principal, who was born in Ethiopia, came out of the blue nobody knew of him, and it's his first job. And of course people question that, but I always in my decisions, if I have the choice between potential and experience, I always go for the potential because experience comes by itself.

Jeff Spurgeon:

And that hiring decision came straight from Franz Welser-Most because the music director in Cleveland has complete authority to decide who is a member of the orchestra. So we've cut you up a bit on what's going on in Cleveland, but on this season opening occasion, Clemency, we ought to show Carnegie Hall a little bit of love, too, don't you think?

Clemency Burton:

Absolutely, Jeff. For audiences and performers, of course, adore Carnegie Hall, is one of the world's greatest houses of music. The performers do also tell us very often that this place can be a little intimidating, Franz Welser-Most didn't put it quite that way, but he did say this.

Welser-Most:

When you walk into a space like that, the most famous artists of the music history have performed here, somehow the walls have soaked that up and there is a vibe, which is very special.

Clemency Burton:

And among the soloist that we'll hear in this, no doubt, very special concert tonight, is pianist Yefim Bronfman, who first learned about Carnegie Hall in a place far from New York City.

Yefim Bronfman:

As a child I remember hearing about it, and having a record of Horowitz his great return to Carnegie Hall, somehow it was a legend for me growing up in Uzbekistan. And, of course for me, it's a shrine, it's the musical center of this country, and one of the great musical centers of the world. Not only the acoustics, but also the artists that come here, so many great recitals, I've heard and, and Horowitz Brendel, of course, I went to every recital of his. And all these great artists, somehow... When I was invited to play here I said, "Why me? And why..." I feel a little bit inferiority complex, you can understand why.

Clemency Burton:

Well, you're going to understand why him when we hear Yefim Bronfman playing Beethoven's Triple Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra, alongside cellist Lynn Harrell, and violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. She has instant recall of her first time performing here, and she does use the word intimidating.

Anne-Sophie:

Carnegie Hall is like... I don't know, like the sun and the moon, it's just up there, particularly for a musician, obviously. So it was a one of the greatest moments of my life when I gave my recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 1988. And being in the hall, knowing of the history, it's quite intimidating actually. But at the same time, it's amazingly inspiring the acoustics. Did you know [inaudible 00:07:47] had this theory that acoustic is one thing, but what a hall carries in terms of history, sweat and blood, and beautiful memories is what really makes it an instrument. And that's exactly what Carnegie Hall is, a wonderful instrument, which has beautifully aged like a Strad, which tells a story and you play within, you are part of that storytelling which goes on.

Clemency Burton:

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter talking about this intimidating, yes, but also so inspiring living legend that is Carnegie Hall, where in just a few minutes she will play a Beethoven violin romance with the Cleveland Orchestra to start this big celebration of Beethoven's 250th anniversary.

Jeff Spurgeon:

There is also music by Richard Strauss on this program, but the concert begins with a work by Otto Nicolai. We will hear what is today his best known work, the overture to his Shakespeare inspired opera, The Merry Wives of Windsor. It's the last of Nicolai's five operas. He wrote a lot of music before his death at age 39 in 1849.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Nicolai enjoyed a period of great popularity in his lifetime. In fact, in part of the world he was more famous during his lifetime than Verdi was. But today, Otto Nicolai remembered mostly for this overture in the concert hall, and to the larger world, for the fact that he helped found one of the greatest orchestras in the world, the Vienna Philharmonic; not a bad legacy that.

Clemency Burton:

Not at all. I think if you found the Vienna Philharmonic, you're forgiven everything really, for the rest of history.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Almost everything. So the lights are down here in Carnegie Hall, the house is nearly full. This is the opening night so there's been a cocktail party and patrons of Carnegie Hall are being more or less literally herded into the hall to take their seats in Isaac Stern auditorium. The concert is sold out, though, I offer that to you as a consolation, knowing that if you didn't get to go to the cocktail party, you certainly get to hear the music and that puts you in a very special group, just the people in Carnegie Hall and you, listening to this Carnegie Hall Live broadcast.

Jeff Spurgeon:

There's a fair amount of black tie in the audience tonight. And on stage now the Cleveland Orchestra with the area behind the stage decorated with some lovely vases of flowers, so it is a festive occasion. And the beginning of not only this season, but as we said, the start of the 250th anniversary celebration of Beethoven. They'll be a great deal of Beethoven music in Carnegie Hall this season, and you will hear a substantial portion of it on Carnegie Hall Live over the next few months, as well.

Jeff Spurgeon:

If that's for me, tell them I'm busy. Oh, that's right, that's just the note in the hall asking people to turn off their cell phones.

Jeff Spurgeon:

So we're about to get this Carnegie Hall Live concert underway with the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Most, the Beethoven's Triple Concerto. Anne-Sophie Mutter playing a Beethoven romance as well, and then a beautiful suite of some of the richest stuff in the repertoire from Richard Strauss's, Der Rosenkavalier.

Jeff Spurgeon:

The applause is for our concert master tonight. Peter Otto, here to ask for the tuning note. For this orchestra, which was founded just 101 years ago in Cleveland, it has been one of the great institutions of that city, and perhaps its greatest ambassador in the world. Remarkable lineup of amazing conductors have taken the helm of work in Cleveland, none quite as powerful in legend and probably because of so many great recordings that were made under George Szell. But as we told you earlier, the man walking out on stage right now will, at the completion of his newly extended contract, outlast Szell's tenure by a year. Franz Welser-Most turns to the audience at Carnegie Hall. Stands up on the podium, and Otto Nicolai's music begins this broadcast from Carnegie Hall Live.

Jeff Spurgeon:

And with that music of Otto Nicolai, the overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor, the 2019-2020 Carnegie Hall season of concerts begins. The Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Franz Welser-Most, and their concert opener tonight's the opera overture, the last of Otto Nicolai's operas. Opening music that kicks off this brand new year at Carnegie Hall.

Jeff Spurgeon:

And now, with a quick offstage moment and back, Franz Welser-Most has asked the musicians of the Cleveland Orchestra to stand to the, as you heard, very enthusiastic applause of this season opening audience, here at Carnegie Hall. Backstage I'm Jeff Spurgeon, along with Clemency Burton-Hill.

Clemency Burton:

And it is, of course, a very celebratory and festive evening but there's a bittersweet note of sadness too, and there's an insert in the program for this Carnegie Hall concert and we want to share with you what it says:

Clemency Burton:

"This concert, the Opening Night Gala for 2019-2020, is dedicated to our beloved friend and world renowned soprano Jesse Norman. Jesse Norman died very tragically earlier this week on September 30th, at the age of 74. She made her debut at Carnegie in 1974, more than 50 performances since as a soloist and recitalist." I feel the world will never know her like again, and it feels fitting that Carnegie Hall should be paying tribute to Jesse Norman in tonight's concert.

Clemency Burton:

The next piece we're going to hear is by a composer that we'll be hearing a lot of this season, I guarantee you that, it's birthday boy, Beethoven, who turns 250 in 2020. Orchestras and ensembles all over the world will, of course, be celebrating with various cycles of his works, and we are going to hear a few of them throughout the season on this Carnegie Hall Live series. Right now though, we're going to hear Beethoven's Romance for violin and orchestra, the one in G major his Opus 40. The violinist for this is the renowned Anne Sophie-Mutter, one of my personal heroes, we caught up with Miss Mutter earlier today and she said the following.

Anne-Sophie:

The G major is the first of two romances, it's an early piece. I'm not quite sure for whom he wrote it, but it's definitely one of these lesser known of which I want to bring out of hiding for the big Beethoven year 2020. And actually, for me, the opening of Carnegie Hall is not only a huge honor and pleasure, it's in the same moment, also the opening of my Beethoven season because from November on this year, I play only Beethoven.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Anne Sophie-Mutter has a great deal of Beethoven and a great many projects celebrating Beethoven this year in her season, as we've just told you here at Carnegie Hall, as well. She's been playing Beethoven of all kinds for a very long time. And after we hear this lesser known, she said of the two of Beethoven's Romances is for violin, we'll do some more furniture moving around on the stage, and make room for a cello and a piano and bring you Beethoven's Triple Concerto with soloists Lynn Harrell and your Yefim Bronfman.

Clemency Burton:

It's important to note that Anne Sophie-Mutter, while one of our greatest Beethoven interpreters and indeed the music of many favorite composers throughout history, is also a wonderful advocate for new music. She's given 27 world premieres; she's a four time Grammy winner, not bad. And she is as passionate about advocacy and social justice off the platform as she is on the concert stage, in 1997 she started a foundation to provide instruments and lessons to musicians in need. Here she is backstage, resplendent in a rather mermaid-like gown of very rich autumnal reds and she's looking absolutely fabulous as she always does.

Jeff Spurgeon:

And the stage door was never quite closed, so she looked over to the... Oh, we should go, and indeed Franz Welser-Most said yes, so onto the stage, they go. Anne Sophie-Mutter and Franz Welser-Most, with the Cleveland Orchestra slightly reduced forces from the Otto Nicolai overture that opened the concert, to bring you the music of Beethoven. The first of the works of Beethoven in this season from Carnegie Hall Live.

Jeff Spurgeon:

A gentle work of Beethoven, but filled with characteristic beauty and played by one of the greatest violinists in the world just for you from Carnegie Hall Live. That was Anne Sophie-Mutter, and Beethoven's Romance No. 1 performed with the Cleveland Orchestra and their music director Franz Welser-Most.

Jeff Spurgeon:

And out for another bow goes Miss Mutter. She begins a great deal of Beethoven with that one performance, her Beethoven year, she's playing a great deal of Beethoven over these next 12, 13, 14 months, Beethoven's 250th birth anniversary is in December of 2020. It's the first of the Beethoven celebrations that's happening here at Carnegie Hall, as well.

Jeff Spurgeon:

And now we're getting ready for a larger dose of Beethoven on this broadcast of the season opening concert from Carnegie Hall Live. And we, Clemency and I, sitting backstage on your behalf, are to enjoy now the first of the two part athletic event of the evening. Which is to say, the moving of the Steinway piano from backstage to center stage at Carnegie Hall.

Clemency Burton:

There it goes.

Jeff Spurgeon:

So there is a closely coordinated group of stagehands, all in suits and ties, and they're getting ready to roll the giant monster out onto the stage. They go past us with just inches to spare.

Clemency Burton:

What a magnificent instrument it is.

Jeff Spurgeon:

It is a magnificent instrument, and it's a wonderful thing to always note that when this great thing goes out on stage at Carnegie Hall. The amazing technology developed over hundreds of years, really refined to greatness in the last part of the 19th century.

Clemency Burton:

Beethoven himself, of course, did so much to refine-

Jeff Spurgeon:

That's right.

Clemency Burton:

... What the piano, as we now know it, really was. While the Carnegie stage crew is bringing out that Steinway, we're going to hear a little bit about this piece from some of tonight's soloists. As we've just been talking about, Anne Sophie-Mutter is devoting her next season entirely to the music of Beethoven. Her appreciation for him is beyond the 250th anniversary of his birth.

Anne-Sophie:

Beethoven, for me, is an example of a human being who has created for the world a token of a hope, and maybe also a philosophy we should adapt much more. The thought of brotherhood and sisterhood, and this embrace which music can be... So Beethoven is all of that to me, he is more than just a composer. He is really a philosopher who has encompassed what music is all about, that it is this huge embrace of all of us.

Clemency Burton:

Wonderful way to put it. Well, in addition to the full Cleveland Orchestra, Anne Sophie-Mutter will be joined on stage by cellist Lynn Harold and pianist Yefim Bronfman. Conductor Franz Welser-Most told us that he has a deep connection to all of these three artists.

Welser-Most:

I know all three of them. Lynn Harold started in Cleveland as solo cellist at the age of 19. Yefim Bronfman is one of our family members, artistic family members in Cleveland. The first time I worked with Anne Sophie-Mutter was in my very first job in provincial Sweden in 1987, or something like that. Basically, music is like a conversation, and it's about taking and giving, and I think this will be just a nice musical conversation.

Jeff Spurgeon:

I'm not precisely sure for whom Beethoven wrote this work. It is thought that it was done for a fella named Prince Lobkowitz, who was a student of Beethoven, a patron and an accomplished fellow. But the piece has a reputation of not being that difficult for the pianist; had to ask Yefim Bronfman about his opinions on that piano part, suggesting that maybe he wasn't going to be working very hard, he could just relax a little out there in a few minutes.

Yefim Bronfman:

Yes, and no, I actually have to disagree with you a little bit on that, because I think that the resting is not necessarily resting. It's always you are worried about tough passages that are coming, and there's some difficult moments in this piece for the pianist. They're not many, but the ones that are there that are really tough you have to be always in top form two play it.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Right, so I've been put in my place, yet again. And with this concert, Carnegie Hall begins a year long celebration, leading up to Beethoven's 250th birth anniversary in December of 1770. The music's never gone out of fashion, the power has been retained through all of these years. We talked with Franz Welser-Most about why this man who was born in December of 1770, remains so powerful in our world today.

Welser-Most:

Beethoven is the first composer in the music history, who actually said, "I don't want to entertain my audience, I want to engage them." And that was a big game changer in the way we perceive classical music. His demands on the audience were absolutely new, and after that, nobody got around that. If you look at Gustav Mahler, if you look at, if you look at... You name it, the time was over where the main function of a composer was to entertain his audience. With Beethoven, he says, "No, I want to engage you." Which of course, was the first political music ever written. He is not just one of the greatest geniuses we have in music history, but he was a total game changer in how we listen to music.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Franz Welser-Most, the music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and a few important words about one of the most important composers we know, that's Beethoven. And you're about to hear his music from pianist Yefim Bronfman, cellist Lynn Harrell, violinist Anne Sophie-Mutter, and the Cleveland Orchestra with Beethoven's Triple Concerto from Carnegie Hall Live.

Clemency Burton:

"It's really something new." Is how Beethoven himself described his decision to write for piano, cello, and violin in his Triple Concerto. He wrote that to his publisher, an unprecedented combination of solo instruments at the time when he wrote it between 1804 to 1807. Often described as less revolutionary, or even evolutionary, in some of his great words, but no less delightful for it. And especially in the hands of tonight's soloists here at Carnegie Hall, we had violinist Anne Sophie-Mutter, cellist Lynn Harrell, and pianist Yefim Bronfman, with the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by their music director Franz Welser-Most.

Clemency Burton:

The soloists are making their way offstage here at Carnegie Hall. Jeff, you looked like you were enjoying that performance.

Jeff Spurgeon:

It's a wonderful piece, and as many people will describe, it's a piano trio with a symphony orchestra interacting, so you get to hear two kinds of things in one; a little chamber music, and work for great soloists and an orchestra. It is a delight, and I was thinking of Yefim Bronfmam waiting with great care between some interesting double octave passages, which I think are occasionally a bedevilment for pianists playing this piece. And, of course, the brilliant and beautiful music that is shared by the cello and the violin.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Back on stage now our soloists. Floral bouquets for, I think, everyone. When Anne Sophie-Mutter came offstage and saw the bouquets back here, she said, "Oh, wow." And they are substantial [crosstalk 00:24:19].

Clemency Burton:

It was almost as much of a maneuver to get the flower bouquets, as it was to get the Steinway on to the stage.

Jeff Spurgeon:

That's just about exactly right.

Clemency Burton:

I'm quite right to for the Opening Night of this 2019-2020 Gala here at Carnegie Hall, which is dedicated to the memory of soprano Jesse Norman. She died very sadly at the age of 74 on Monday, the 30th of September. She made over 50 performances here, described in tonight's program as incomparable performances. She enthralled audiences as both recitalist and a soloist for orchestras.

Clemency Burton:

She artfully curated Carnegie Hall's 2009 citywide festival, HONOR! A celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy. And she served on the Committee of Honor for the 2014 festival, UBUNTU: Music and Arts of South Africa. They say Miss Norman's resplendent voice will continue to inspire musicians everywhere, and guide those from shared had steadfast belief in the power of music to make a meaningful difference in people's lives. Well, if it's not too grandiose statements, I think that's what we do every day at WQXR, and especially on a nights like this, which we're also celebrating.

Jeff Spurgeon:

And it's wonderful to have so many great musician here at one time. Now there's a little more traffic control going on, we have to put a rather substantial orchestra on stage to play the next and final work on this program, suite of music from Richard Strauss's opera, Der Rosenkavalier; and we have to get that Steinway marched off the stage too. But we will occupy the time most profitably, because we are privileged to be in conversation now with cellist Lynn Harrell. It's a pleasure, sir, thank you so much for your performance.

Lynn Harrell:

The performance, that was our great pleasure, because we're playing in the greatest Hall in the world, but to be on WQXR after so many years, it's just really a great treat. Thank you.

Jeff Spurgeon:

You are a New York native and yet you are very comfortable in the company of these Cleveland musicians, because you started there as a solo cellist when you were but a lad. You couldn't go out for a drink after the concert.

Lynn Harrell:

That's right, I couldn't!

Jeff Spurgeon:

Since then, you've traveled with Yefim Bronfman and Anne Sophie-Mutter playing in a trio for many years. Gosh, what a legacy you bring to this performance tonight and to this hall. When's the first time you played in Carnegie? You remember?

Lynn Harrell:

Yes, I played as a recipient of a tour arranged for musical youth by Jeunesses Musicales in Canada, and I played the Boccherini concerto with Leopold Stokowski and American Symphony.

Clemency Burton:

Wow.

Jeff Spurgeon:

It's wonderful because those are names, which, for many of us, seem some time ago-

Lynn Harrell:

Yes, of corse.

Jeff Spurgeon:

So to have someone here who's worked with Stokowski and these people... And you made the first recording of Victor Herbert's Cello Concerto number one, why is that thing laying around so long and unrecorded?

Lynn Harrell:

Because it hadn't been published, so we had to find the music and it turned up in the Free Library in Philadelphia. A music consultant there put the parts together and we were able to record it. But I think it's been recorded since then, hasn't it?

Jeff Spurgeon:

Yes, but you were the first to do it.

Lynn Harrell:

Yes.

Jeff Spurgeon:

It's a significant work because, if for no other reason, it inspired Dvořák to write his Cello Concerto. But how did you know about the work? Did you go digging for it? Did you hear about it?

Lynn Harrell:

Well, the piece that really caught Dvořák's attention was the second concerto, but it is true that the first concerto explores the instrument in an even more virtuosic fashion. And Victor Herbert, of greater fame, later on in his career with musical theater pieces, understood that the cello can't compete with a full orchestra, so he scores it in completely different way. And amazing, since Beethoven had been deaf for perhaps almost 10 years, totally deaf, he understood also in this Triple Concerto that if you wrote for the piano, like he did for the fourth or fifth Piano Concerto, you wouldn't hear the violin or the cello. So it was even then, from a deaf man, very sensitive to the intimate qualities of my wonderful instrument, the cello.

Clemency Burton:

Which I'm happily looking at directly opposite my microphone. So much is made of the problem facing Beethoven here, this sort of compositional challenge, how on earth to give each soloist sufficient material to really shine at the same time as keeping it within the bounds of the form? And making sure that we can hear you all, especially that cello. Tell us what this is like to play? What are the challenges as soloist?

Lynn Harrell:

The challenges are just as much for any concerto, there are the difficult spots that really challenge any cellist in the height of his powers. But then there's also the chamber music element of being able to fit in with your colleagues and colleagues who also are big personality soloist, which means there's more volatility involved, which is all to the service of Mr. Beethoven.

Jeff Spurgeon:

That's wonderful. That's a wonderful description of your colleagues in this work, and of your own self, as you have been active as a soloist and an orchestra member and a teacher for so very long. I wanted to ask you too about some of your charitable work, the HEARTbeats Foundation.

Lynn Harrell:

Yes.

Jeff Spurgeon:

You started that not here, not in Cleveland, but in Los Angeles. What is that foundation and what does it do?

Lynn Harrell:

It helps war torn areas and poverty areas for children to connect to music, because music inspires the spirit no matter what the situations are. So we went to Nepal, and worked with the children there, not with the instruments of the area, but with my cello, my wife with her violin, and we brought a folk singer with a guitar. It was just extraordinary, people who were living in shacks with no floor just the dirt on the floor, were just absolutely so happy and transfixed by the music.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Well, as we were tonight in your performance with your colleagues, Yefim Bronfman and Anne Sophie-Mutter of this great Triple Concerto of Beethoven. You've helped us start the Carnegie Hall season and the Beethoven 250th a great deal of celebration. We thank you very much.

Lynn Harrell:

All right. It's great pleasure. Thank you.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Thank you so much. All right out on the Carnegie Hall stage now you hear the Cleveland Orchestra tuning up. The stage door is closed, and we're ready for the final work on the season opening program for 2019-2020. The Cleveland Orchestra, their music director Franz Welser-Most, and bigger forces on stage now, Clemency, we're going to get some Strauss.

Clemency Burton:

We certainly are, we're having a concert suite from the opera Der Rosenkavalier. The original concert version of this opera was in need of some arrangements TLC, that was something that the conductor tonight Franz Welser-Most was happy to give, as he told us earlier. Here he is back on stage at Carnegie Hall, he looks like he's had a good evening, he's enjoying himself immensely.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Indeed. The orchestra on its feet, Maestro now on the podium, and its music of Richard Strauss's from Carnegie Hall Live.

Jeff Spurgeon:

You've just heard the Opening Night Concert starting the 2019-2020 season of Carnegie Hall, with the Cleveland Orchestra and their music director Franz Welser-Most. And a suite of music from Richard Strauss's great, grand, beautiful opera, as long as you don't read the libretto, Der Rosenkavalier.

Jeff Spurgeon:

It's a suite of music that... Well actually the music from this opera has come from a number of... Has been turned into a number of suites. This one is a fairly recent suite, put together in just the last few years and altered by the Maestro himself. He wanted to make a few additions and told us earlier today that originally he put together about a 45 minute suites for this program and Carnegie Hall said, "Hold on, it's Opening Night, we have some other things to do." So they cut it back a little bit.

Jeff Spurgeon:

But the closing notes of the suite are the closing notes of the opera, which ends on that lovely triumphant note, love winning out. And that's the suite we've heard performed by the Cleveland Orchestra tonight. Backstage I'm Jeff Spurgeon and Clemency Burton-Hill as well.

Clemency Burton:

What a night, Jeff, what a night of music making of the very highest order. Wonderful to hear the Cleveland Orchestra here at Carnegie Hall, Franz Welser-Most, he's on his way to becoming the longest standing music director of the orchestra in Cleveland. We heard earlier how he hadn't expected to stay perhaps quite so long in Cleveland, but he talked about how that extraordinary music making, the fact that they are always prepared for him, there's something very special in the relationship between Maestro and Orchestra.

Clemency Burton:

He's bringing the members of the Cleveland Orchestra to their feet now, their collective feet to say, "Soak up the audience and their fantastic reception," here on Opening Nights. And what a night of music making it's been.

Clemency Burton:

Franz Welser-Most, that native of Australia, and the Cleveland Orchestra bringing a touch of Viennese splendor to New York City this evening. We have heard a variety of Viennese musical ideas across the course of the evening, and of course, only fitting to close with that one.  Polka by Johann Strauss, the Younger, bringing to a fantastic close this evening Jeff.

Jeff Spurgeon:

It's nice to go out with a little out of breath, and that will allow us to do that with a little bit of the Strauss rush and all of those wonderful details that Johann Strauss Jr. places in his works that make them interesting to hear time and time again. There's always some little extra thing, even in a section that might be repeated or brought up, Strauss keeps it very interesting.

Jeff Spurgeon:

So indeed, as you mentioned, lots of Viennese ideas, and those are most being an Austrian native himself, a perfectly appropriate little nightcap on his first concert of the 2019-2020 Carnegie Hall season. The Orchestra on its feet, the Maestro in front, and it's a wonderful conclusion to the beginning of this new season at Carnegie Hall.

Clemency Burton:

We've mentioned that there will be Beethoven a plenty in this 2019-2020 Carnegie Hall season. We'll be broadcasting much of it on our Carnegie Hall Live series of broadcasts. Carnegie Hall will play host not one but two complete Beethoven cycles, symphony cycles, that is, and we'll be partaking in some of those.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Indeed, and lots of chamber music through the season as well. You heard a rush from the crowd just a moment ago, the Maestro tossed his bouquet into the audience. As far as we know everyone's perfectly safe, and someone's extremely delighted, I'm sure too. Back once more for another bow, the Maestro asks the concert master to speak, the rest of the orchestra joins him. One of America's, and indeed the world's, greatest ensembles for the performance of this amazing art form of classical music.

Jeff Spurgeon:

And Carnegie Hall has been a home to this art form since 1891, and is one of the world's great capitals of this art form. And through those presentations, Carnegie Hall has come to stand for the pinnacle of art history in this form and others as well. And we are so pleased to celebrate it in this broadcast series we enjoy.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Just offstage. Congratulations, Maestro, thanks for leading us into this 2020 season with this amazing ensemble. You get to command now, and are scheduled to do so for 25 years. Congratulations on that contract.

Welser-Most:

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Jeff Spurgeon:

That's very exciting. You were a little out of breath, is it the Strauss that did it or tossing the bouquet? Which...

Welser-Most:

The Strauss. It's Furioso-Galopp, you should be out of breath after that.

Jeff Spurgeon:

It brings all of the orchestra right to the front of their seats. You have to pay such attention in a piece like that.

Welser-Most:

Yeah, it lives on the drive and they are having fun doing it.

Jeff Spurgeon:

What are you looking forward to in the Cleveland Orchestra season this year?

Welser-Most:

A lot of the operas we're going to do, like Lulu next May and then Othello, the after. But also discovering a lot of works which we haven't done together, like we're going to do a Symphony No. 4, or second, and pieces like that. And then it's always great when we go on tour, next spring we're going to Europe, Vienna, Hamburg, and then to Abu Dhabi. And the following fall, we're going again to Europe and to Israel, and that's always fun.

Clemency Burton:

Anymore Beethoven in this-

Welser-Most:

Sorry?

Clemency Burton:

Any more Beethoven in this 250th season?

Welser-Most:

We are sort of not about these things, we actually... Two years ago, for our centennial, we played all the Beethoven symphonies. Beethoven is good music all the time, not just this-

Clemency Burton:

Not just for this season. Well, I'm sure everyone would agree with that.

Jeff Spurgeon:

You are playing another program here at Carnegie Hall to help them open the season, that will include some music by... This is a composer who's been influenced by Beethoven and has drawn Beethoven into his other works, so you do carry that spirit with you in the old and the new at the same time.

Welser-Most:

I think first of all, Beethoven was really sort of a modernist. After him, music life was not the same anymore. And, I sort of always joke with him and say, "You're the grandson of Alban Berg." And the first time I said that he was sort of, "How did you know that Alban Berg is my favorite composers?" I said, "You know, it tells in your music."

Welser-Most:

But is somebody like great composers, innovative, but yet they're bringing a lot of tradition with them. Mozart was like that with Haydn, or Beethoven the same, and Brahms, and so on. So I love music, it's wonderful. And this piece we're playing with Yefim Bronfman, our soloist, connects really with the second 5, because it's a funeral march.

Clemency Burton:

Bringing it back to tonight, Maestro, we were celebrating this evening, was dedicated to the memory of Jesse Norman who passed away earlier this week. I wondered if you had any memories or thoughts to share about that great talent.

Welser-Most:

Of course, I've heard Jesse Norman for the first time with the Vienna Philharmonic and Claudia Abbado singing. That was in my hometown in Linz, I think it was the late 70s. And then I heard her in Salzburg, of course, quite a few times, and quite a few recitals. I love, I just love that.

Welser-Most:

And it was a voice which was really unique, there was a depth to that voice. And also what I loved about her, she had a great sense of humor, she had an enormous self irony about herself, that was really special. She was really great artist, and she just had to walk onto stage and you were completely taken by that.

Jeff Spurgeon:

A powerful instrument and she wielded it with enormous skill and grace. Maestro, you're continuing a great legacy, you're building a great legacy of your own, and continuing an amazing legacy in America. I am betting, this is not something you imagined for yourself, even as you began your career and began to understand that you had what was necessary to do the amazing work you do.

Welser-Most:

No, especially when I started this Music Director and Chief and I didn't think it would go that long. But it's such a happy marriage and why not continuing a happy marriage?

Jeff Spurgeon:

Absolutely.

Welser-Most:

There's nothing wrong with that. What's so wonderful is we have found an understanding of each other where it's like making chamber music. The second violin of the [inaudible 00:41:34] quartet, of the famous quartet, was a teacher of mine. I always adored that quartet, and they played for over 25 years together, and when you heard in their last seasons, when you heard concerts, it was still so fresh. That's what's happening here as well. Every time I come home to Cleveland, I look forward to that. Yeah, I could not be happier.

Jeff Spurgeon:

I think you said it when you said, "whenever I come home to Cleveland." I think that told us all we needed to know.

Welser-Most:

Yeah, and I think legacy is always, as I say, a very American thing. But with the great tradition and history this orchestra has, you only can succeed if you don't look constantly over your shoulder to the ghosts from the past. You value them, you respect them, you appreciate all that, but you have to move forward.

Clemency Burton:

And we have to let you move forward because there's an opening night gala happening this very evening. Franz Welser-Most, thank you so much. Congratulations on a fantastic night.

Welser-Most:

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Jeff Spurgeon:

It's a pleasure.

Jeff Spurgeon:

Carnegie Hall Live is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts on the web@arts.gov. Additional support is provided, in part, by the Howard Gilman foundation, and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council.

Clemency Burton:

Thank you to all of the folks who helped with this concert. Clive Gillinson and the staff of Carnegie Hall, WQXR's recording crew, which includes George Wellington and Noriko Okabe, Duke Marcos, and Bill Siegmund. Our social media manager is Greta Rainbow, and Joe Young is our stage manager. WQXR's production team includes Christine Herskovitz, Matt Abramowitz and Eileen Delahunty.

Jeff Spurgeon:

I'm Jeff Spurgeon.

Clemency Burton:

And I'm Clemency Burton-Hill. Thank you for listening. Carnegie Hall Live is a production of WQXR in New York.

 

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