CONSIDERED OPINION OF THE RED {AN ORCHESTRA} CONCERT OF 4/14/07

Johann Sebastian Bach: Selections from The Well-Tempered Clavier (orch. Jonathan Sheffer). Jonathan Sheffer: Romp: Concerto for Soprano Saxophone; A Red Couch Floating in Lake Erie. (Anders Paulsson, soprano sax.; Andrea Chenoweth, sop.; James Martin, Andrew Garland, bar.; Jonathan Sheffer, cond.)

A conductor needn’t always be self-effacing. Herbert von Karajan, it is said, once climbed into a Viennese limo and was asked by the driver where he wanted to go. "It doesn't matter," replied Karajan. "I am wanted everywhere." Even so, when an ensemble’s conductor and artistic director devotes a full concert to his own music—well, you might be inclined to raise your eyebrows. He had better come up with the goods.

In the case of Cleveland’s Red {an orchestra}, the stakes are especially high. The ensemble’s small number of performances means that a full third of this season is being devoted to music written or arranged by Jonathan Sheffer. Is the gamble worth it?

Well, the payoff’s not bad for one of the three works on That Red Guy—a concerto for soprano saxophone and orchestra that, somewhere along the line, acquired the title Romp. It’s music well suited to the peculiarities of the solo instrument: here its innate bluesiness, there its lyricism, here again its vaguely Asian sound. At Saturday evening’s concert, soloist Anders Paulsson deftly navigated the music’s quick-changing landscape. The result was far less compelling than the “great adventure story” to which Sheffer modestly compares the concerto in his program note. But Romp is at least reasonably congenial.

Sheffer’s arrangements of six preludes from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier were less successful. They were designed, Sheffer writes, to emphasize the connection between Bach and Minimalism. That effect comes through for about twenty seconds in this version of the C-Sharp Major Prelude from Book II, and for a little longer in the popular C Major Prelude from Book I. More often, you feel like you’re hearing some bad easy listening version of Bach’s music, replete with cheesy sounding tuned percussion. It’s enough to make you yearn for something really authentic. You know: like Stokowski.

But even lounge-music Bach is more listenable than Sheffer’s A Red Couch Floating in Lake Erie. It’s dubbed “A Symphony of Songs,” though it resembles a series of unfinished musical sketches more than anything really symphonic. Mind you, there’s no lack of ambition here: a five-movement libretto cobbled together from Cleveland-related poetry and prose; props that include caps, a megaphone, a Browns sweatshirt; a large orchestra, with some players briefly positioned at the sides of the auditorium; five vocalists. To be sure, the singers did their best with the thing. Baritones James Martin and Andrew Garland did a nice job delineating the characters in their second-movement duet. And Soprano Andrea Chenoweth brought a winning naïveté to a couple of texts that would have been hard to stomach without it.

But there’s only so much you can do with a slipshod score that too often sounds like it’s built from imitations of film and Broadway composers. The whole thing winds up with a gassy finale that’s pure schmaltz. And that’s too bad—that a onetime Leonard Bernstein pupil should cap his symphony with a movement that, at its heart, is pure Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Jerome Crossley for WCLV 104/9.

Considered Opinions is WCLV's program that reviews performances by Cleveland-area music ensembles. Commentator Jerome Crossley offers an informed and witty perspective on performances by groups that include the Cleveland Orchestra, Opera Cleveland, and Red {an orchestra}. Considered Opinions typically airs at 9.45 a.m., 12.20 p.m., and 5.20 p.m. the Friday following a Cleveland Orchestra concert, and it repeats at 9.45 a.m. on Saturday. Other air-times depend on the schedule of the ensembles reviewed.

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