Cleveland Pops has a rhapsodic time opening its 15th season
October 23, 2010 - Rhythm isn't the only thing you've got to possess when performing the music of George Gershwin. You also need charm, insouciance and passion, qualities that were in bountiful supply during the opening concert of the Cleveland Pops Orchestra's 15th season Friday at Severance Hall.
The American master shared part of the program, as the evening's title indicated: "Rhapsody in Red, White & Blue: The Music of George Gershwin and Friends." Those pals were Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter, as well as a songwriting team he never could have known, John Kander and Fred Ebb, whose delightful "Sara Lee" at least fit stylistically into this warm stew.
It was a cozy night with (mostly) familiar fare, the only novelties being the Kander and Ebb ditty and Gershwin's "Japanese," an orchestral piece that sounds like "An American in Kyoto by Way of Gilbert and Sullivan" (a theme from "The Mikado" makes a sly appearance).
Carl Topilow, the Pops' conductor, made his first appearance sauntering on in blue jacket playing his blue clarinet in "It Ain't Necessarily So." What followed was a typically stuffed Pops meal played with lustrous and frisky authority by the orchestra – especially trumpeter Jack Schantz, a suave wonder in "Embraceable You" – and sung with panache by guests Kishna Davis and Doug LaBrecque.
Davis is something else, a soprano with a sumptuous voice she can send soaring sweetly into the heavens ("Summertime") or growling with earthy sorrow ("My Man's Gone Now") – both from "Porgy and Bess."
In "By Strauss," Davis played up the operatic parody of a diva enamored of herself and the music's waltzing daffiness. Her blues-drenched version of "Can't Help Lovin' That Man of Mine" made one pine to see her in a production of "Show Boat."
(But an editor is needed to tweak her program biography, which states that she sings "the title role of Aida in Puccini's 'Suor Angelica'" – a neat trick.)
LaBrecque bounced onstage in different jackets and ties, savoring the opportunity to thrust his ringing tenor into the stratospheres. You could almost see him dancing on the ivories in Berlin's "I Love a Piano."
The gleeful tenor kept the audience informed of the Yankees' pending demise before launching into an ardent account of Kern's "All the Things You Are" that concluded with a hushed high note. At night's end, he went into full Al Jolson mode to perform "Swanee."
Together, Davis and LaBrecque generated giddy chemistry in "S'Wonderful" and "I Got Rhythm," which brought Topilow back as clarinetist for an improvisatory feast similar to the one he devised earlier with pianist Kathryn Brown in Gershwin's "Walking the Dog."
Preceding the canine counterpoint, Pops clarinetist Louis Gangale did honors in the swooping passage that opens "Rhapsody in Blue." With Brown as fleet, crystalline soloist and the Pops giving its rhythmic and sonic all, Gershwin's jazzy explosion was as beguiling as ever.
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