The Cleveland Orchestra gives the US premiere of Mad Song

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The keyword for Thursday evening November 13 at Severance Music Center was stamina.

 Without that essential quality, the performance of two demanding works by English hornist Robert Walters and The Cleveland Orchestra, led by guest conductor Tugan Sokhiev, might have fallen flat.

Instead, the concert entered the record books as a meticulously played sonic spectacular.

Geoffey Gordon’s Mad Song, written in 2020 after a fascinating poem by the 18th-century English mystic William Blake, was commissioned for Dimitri Mestdag, solo English horn of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra.

The soloist narrates the poem in Gordon’s three continuous movements, which traverse the entire range of the instrument and ask for every possible musical gesture from an instrument often relegated to a pastoral role due to its characteristic sound.

Here, the composer takes the soloist to the brink, and although the concerto is scored for a large orchestra with a huge percussion section plus piano, celesta and harp, Gordon has given Walters, the Orchestra’s solo English horn, a lot of breathing space, skillfully orchestrating it so the instrument never has to fight with the orchestra.

At the opening, the English horn rises out of a sound cloud of percussion, winds and brass. Walters played his long musical lines with a beautiful, rich tone that sang out in the hall.

Solo cadenzas were cleverly written and brilliantly played, with multiple colors, music that jumps from low to high register, and long, legato lines punctuated with vivid short notes.

Throughout, Gordon created solo opportunities for many other instruments, especially the bass clarinet. Sokhiev guided everything with meticulous precision, and the large audience was quick to give soloist, orchestra and composer a standing ovation.