The Cleveland Pops Orchestra certainly knows how to celebrate life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
For their fourth annual "Salute to Our Armed Forces" Friday at Severance Hall, the ensemble and music director Carl Topilow extracted every ounce of character from the music at hand, even as they squeezed a battalion of guests onto the program.
The extravaganza included performances by the United States Army Ground Forces Band and the Mutual Gifts Gospel Choir, as well as appearances by members of the Tuskegee Airmen, basketball legend Wayne Embry and Channel 8 weatherman Dick Goddard.
It was a stirring and entertaining concert, crammed with invigorating music, touching tributes to every branch of the armed forces and a stars-and-stripes finale replete with a quintet of Sousa-savoring piccolo players and Topilow's red-white-and-blue clarinet.
Oh, and, naturally, Tchaikovsky's "1812" Overture. No one seems to mind that a Russian work depicting Napoleon's army battling the czar's forces has become a symbol for American patriotism and victory. Topilow led the Pops Orchestra in a soulful, thrusting performance, with brasses from the Army Ground Forces Band pealing forth magnificently from the balcony.
Topilow's programming went well beyond direct references to war and freedom. A Glenn Miller medley, in a superb arrangement by Pops trombonist Paul Ferguson, paid tribute to the band leader whose irresistible dance music helped keep a nation's morale high during some of the darkest hours of World War II.
The Army Ground Forces Band touched on military matters in works by Aaron Copland and James Horner. But the ensemble, led with minimal gestures and maximal musicality by Capt. Dwayne Millburn (a former Topilow student at the Cleveland Institute of Music), also saluted civilian achievements by two American icons, Henry Fillmore and Leonard Bernstein. The crackerjack band played the former's "Man of the Hour" march and the latter's suite from "Candide" with enormous rhythmic vitality and charm.
Virtually everything on the program pleased ears and lifted spirits: the U.S. Army Herald Trumpets in the "Triumphal March" from Verdi's "Aida"; the Mutual Gifts Gospel Choir (all women) in several rousing numbers; and the entire audience, in excellent, exuberant voice, singing patriotic tunes and waving tiny American flags.
This wasn't happiness pursued, but happiness—however fleeting—achieved.
