By Mark Sattler

This year I especially look forward to the concert which the Cleveland Orchestra will perform under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst on 28 August. The playing of this leading American orchestra, which is rich in tradition, is simply overwhelming! In the past, I have always considered concerts by the “Clevelanders” to be highpoints of the Festival.


The juxtaposition of the different musical languages and styles of Claude Debussy, Toshio Hosokawa, and Richard Strauss on this program strikes me as extremely exciting. For this sort of concert planning, which is based on contrasts, is often more illuminating than the usual gathering of Austro-German composers: Illuminating because each piece retains its individuality and can moreover be “discovered” by listeners through this individuality.

As to the opening work, Claude Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune,” it is simply wonderful how in this showpiece of musical impressionism the composer captures the  shimmering, lazy mood of a Mediterranean afternoon through a subtle intoxication of sound colors, in which lascivious and erotic undertones are not scanted.

I’m very excited about the world premiere of “Woven Dreams,” the new orchestral work by Toshio Hosokawa, which Japan’s most-famous living composer has written as a Roche Commission. Hosokawa’s sound language is comparable to that of Debussy in its impressionism, but it is rooted in ancient Japanese musical culture which has been influenced by Zen Buddhism. In “Woven Dreams,” we hear a slowly pulsing music whose rhythm and gestures are determined by inhaling and exhaling. I’ve been wondering for a long time why Hosokawa’s works have been so well received in our latitudes. Perhaps it has to do with their connection to nature: the sense of naturalness that they radiate and that they make so readily apparent to the ear. The unity of humanity, nature, and the cosmos is of great importance for Hosokawa’s aesthetic. Yet this “superstructure” is not something abstract but becomes concrete as it is inscribed into the musical material and thus becomes perceptible to the senses. It’s simply fantastic how the composer succeeds in rendering all this with such resounding results!

Concluding the evening is Richard Strauss’s “Ein Heldenleben,” the epitome of the symphonic poem from Central Europe. How impressively the fate of a hero is depicted here through the most opulent orchestral shadings and eruptions; for me, this piece is one of Strauss’s most brilliant scores. It represents the peak of late-romantic musical culture, while its “egotism” – after all, the composer intended to build a monument to himself with his  “Hero’s Life ” – underlines the great distance from Hosokawa’s compositional approach. But the house of music is spacious and can accommodate many rooms. And so I look forward to hearing these three distinctive and superb pieces in the concert hall.