The Cleveland Orchestra in Miami — Daniel Harding conducts Holst’s The Planets and Avery Amereau sings Elgar’s Sea Pictures

Elgar
Sea Pictures, Op.37

Holst
The Planets – Suite for Large Orchestra, Op.32

Avery Amereau (contralto)

South Florida Treble Chorus

The Cleveland Orchestra
Daniel Harding 

The Cleveland Orchestra concluded its annual residency at Miami’s Arsht Center with a program of music by English composers.

The five songs comprising Elgar’s Sea Pictures have no narrative or thematic connection apart from their nautical subject matter. The texts by five different nineteenth-century poets strike the present-day listener as rather antiquated, but Florida native Avery Amereau’s communicative rendition brought them to life. Her voice was gorgeous not only in deeper passages, but also on high notes at climactic moments. Although the orchestration of ‘Sea Slumber Song’ is suggestive of surging ocean waves striking the shore, Elgar did not really attempt in this work to create a depiction of the sea. Amereau gave powerful renditions of ‘Sabbath Morning at Sea’ and ‘The Swimmer’, but brought sweet subtlety to the gentler settings, with her performance of ‘Where Corals Lie’ especially beautiful. Harding was her sensitive accompanist, setting comfortable tempos and evoking fine playing.

In contrast to his rather staid demeanor in the Elgar, Harding was a dynamic and forceful presence in a brilliant performance of The Planets. At the outset of ‘Mars, the Bringer of War’, bouncing col legno bows created a visual as well as sonic image of an army on the march, and Harding’s left-hand seemed to grasp the music as the volume built. There were outstanding contributions from trumpet and flute en route to a huge, pounding climax, after which ‘Venus, the Bringer of Peace’ followed without a pause. Here the strings excelled, with excellent solos. ‘Mercury, the Winged Messenger’ was indeed mercurial as the winds collaborated brilliantly to create cascades of rapid rising and falling figures. ‘Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity’ came across as more magisterial than jolly, with the horns and solo trumpet outstanding and the hymn-tune ringing out grandly. As an octogenarian, I especially identified with the deliberate pace of ‘Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age’, but welcomed the sprightly contrast in ‘Uranus, the Magician’. Finally, in the ethereal ‘Neptune, the Mystic’, Harding had us holding our breath as the gentle offstage women’s voices faded away.