Friday night's program at Severance Hall by the Cleveland Pops Orchestra was so full of substantial music that it was easy to forget that it was, after all, a Pops concert.
Music director Carl Topilow led his players in an evening of music from Spain and Italy that included a complete performance of Joaquin Rodrigo's wildly popular "Concierto de Aranjuez" for guitar and orchestra, with soloist Jason Vieaux, as well as meaty selections from Italian opera and Spanish zarzuela.
The evening was something of a homecoming for the featured vocal soloist, tenor Eduardo Valdes, who was a voice student of George Vassos at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Vassos was in the front row to hear his former protege, now with the Metropolitan Opera.
Valdes showed himself to be a first-rate purveyor of song, with an appealing if somewhat formalized stage presence and an easy familiarity with the highest reaches of his range, mounting to the top A's and higher with no visible strain at all.
There was a touch of roughness around the edges of his high notes, but that could be the result of slight fatigue, having performed at the Met the night before.
Like Valdes, guitarist Jason Vieaux is a CIM alum and now teaches there (as does conductor Topilow - do we detect a theme here?). He played Rodrigo's concerto, which the elan audiences have come to expect from this fast-rising guitar hero, eliciting applause between each movement.
The orchestra was in good voice Friday night, though in the outer movements of the Rodrigo concerto there were some late entrances from the brass that adulterated the rhythmic pulse of the music. The strings sounded especially fine, considering that there were fewer players than usual.
This being a Cleveland Pops concert, however, there had to be at least one moment for some of Topilow's trademark clowning. That came when he relinquished the podium to assistant conductor Robert Tuohy and took up a clarinet to essay Woody Herman's "Italian Fiesta," a medley that included such bewhiskered standards as "Santa Lucia," "Torna a Surriento" and that inevitable ode to the vertical railway, "Funiculi,
Funicula."
Topilow eschewed his regular licorice stick for a plastic instrument in the Italian tricolor of red, white and green. The look is a cute one, but the tone of the plastic clarinet just cannot match that of the standard one.
Tip of the month: Keep your eye on Tuohy, a young conductor who clearly knows how to give an orchestra what it needs and more. Word is that he'll be studying in London next year. Here's betting that he'll be making a name for himself very soon.
