Hamburg: Riverside Reveries

Fifteen concerts. Thirteen venues. Twelve cities. Nine countries. All in 23 days. The Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst’s final European tour together is a journey of extraordinary scale, and it began at a fitting place for a voyage: along the Elbe River.

The Elbphilharmonie has become one of Hamburg’s defining landmarks since it opened in 2017. It draws inspiration from the surrounding harbor with its brick, warehouse-esque base crowned by a sweeping glass structure that evokes waves.

The natural, flowing architecture continues inside its Grand Hall. The audience was wrapped in the lush vocals of soprano Golda Schultz as she joined the Orchestra and Welser-Möst for Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs to open the tour. Instead of taking the position next to the conductor’s podium, as she had done during the opening week of concerts at Severance Music Center, Schultz was nestled between the low brass and basses when the concert began. While the hall’s “vineyard” design means no audience member is more than 30 meters from the conductor, Schultz’s location drew listeners in even closer for Strauss’s haunting farewell.

The second night showed a different perspective of what the Elbphilharmonie can do. The sold-out and enthusiastic crowd warmly welcomed The Cleveland Orchestra for Mozart’s Symphony No. 34, R. Strauss’s Symphonia domestica, and Berd Richard Deutsch’s Intensity. The hall provided excellence views of the Orchestra’s percussionists as they carefully and quickly switched between instruments during the Deutsch, ranging from the glockenspiel and tam-tam to a rain stick and slide whistles.

In a concert hall where the past and present coexist, The Cleveland Orchestra’s program struck a similar balance between tradition and modernity.