Classical Concert Reviews Cinci

@cincysymphony continued its slate of concerts for winter 2025 with a program pairing works by two giants of 20th-century music, Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy, under the direction of German-born guest conductor Jun Märkl
The program opened with an invigorating, bouncy performance of what may be Strauss’s wittiest tone poem, Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, telling the tale of the 14th-century jokester who pranked many a member of the bourgeois elite. Highest praise goes to the trumpets, clarinets and percussion of the orchestra for putting Strauss’s storytelling genius on full display, in particular the wails of the E-flat clarinet depicting Eulenspiegel’s being led to the gallows.
Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 1 followed, in a luminous, technically impeccable performance. Written for the composer’s father to play in 1882-83, the concerto demonstrates more than a few shades of Mozart in its orchestral scale and concise length (only around 15 minutes of music), and al the players brought that intimacy front and center. There were a few small moments, though where the solo horn’s middle and lower registers occasionally got lost in the overall texture, but it was an enjoyable performance nonetheless.
Claude Debussy’s Images for orchestra is one of the most well-known of his late larger-scale works, after the symphonic suite La Mer. Written between 1905 and 1912, it’s three movements represent a kind of musical travelogue, with themes based on traditional Spanish rhythms as well as influences from English and French folk songs, all wrapped I the intoxicating sound world of French Impressionism.
Knowing that Maestro Märkl made an award-winning recording cycle of all of Debussy’s orchestral works about fifteen years ago for the Naxos label, it was really refreshing to see a conductor who has become an absolute Debussy authority lead it with such profound inspiration and analytical precision. Such was the case for the percussion and winds in the second and third movements (played in reverse order) as well as celesta, harps and strings in the first movement. Every expectation of an extraordinary performance of this piece were exceeded in every metric.
Bravi tutti!