Guest artist Craig Schulman was billed as the star of the Cleveland Pops
Orchestra concert Friday night at Severance Hall. But the veteran Broadway
singer did not shine until the end of the program. In the meantime, a teenage
wonder from Brunswick, Ohio, dazzled the crowd, and conductor-clarinetist
Carl Topilow put on a terrific show.
Pianist Jerry Lang II, 16, played Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm Variations" with
steely fingers, clean technique and fiery personality. With dreadlocks flying
and shoulders dancing, he embodied the music and drew the audience into his
exciting interpretation. After his performance, he was awarded the orchestra's
7th annual Jean L. Petitt Memorial Music Scholarship.
Topilow led the orchestra in energetic performances of medleys from Broadway
shows, and he took the solo spotlight playing his red and black clarinets.
With the red one, he told a musical joke based on "Over the Rainbow" from "The
Wizard of Oz." With the black one, he portrayed the title character
in "Clarinetist on the Roof."
In this klezmer-flavored revision of "Fiddler on the Roof," the
fun-loving virtuoso made his instrument sing, dance, laugh and cry. A consummate
showman, he played with extraordinary expressiveness and breath control while
simultaneously leading the orchestra and getting audience members to sing
a four-note phrase, clap in rhythm and sway in their seats.
As if that weren't enough, Topilow also contributed an orchestral arrangement
of selections from "The Fantasticks." Trombonist Paul Ferguson,
however, made the most distinctive new arrangement on the program. In his
jazzy take on songs by Irving Berlin, the ensemble sounded like the orchestral
counterpart of a swing-era big band In the first part of the program, Schulman
introduced himself in songs from "Man of La Mancha," "The
Secret Garden" and "Company."
Although he belted out notes with power and used the microphone effectively,
his voice sounded tired and stale. In a scene from "The Wizard of Oz" performed
with scholarship runner-up Sharon Pearlman as Dorothy, he pushed his vibrato
to extremes.
When he got to his specialties, however, his interpretations were thrilling.
Having given more than 2,000 performances as Jean Valjean in "Les Misérables," Schulman
has mastered the skill of making every inflection meaningful. His performance
of the tearjerker, "Bring Him Home," struck an emotional chord.
He was impressive, too, in "Music of the Night" from "The
Phantom of the Opera." Smoothly blending gesture, posture and tone,
he transformed himself into the tragic title character. In response to a
standing ovation, Schulman offered an encore, "This is the Moment" from "Jekyll & Hyde," another
show in which he played the title character - or as Topilow quipped, both
of them.
© 2006 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.
