An Enigmatic Night At The Orchestra

Give him time.

He is a substantive and dedicated young musician.

Taking over a legendary orchestra from a towering maestro like Christoph von Dohnanyi would have been a daunting task for any conductor.

Such sentiments were voiced often by officials of the Cleveland Orchestra when, at 42, the Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Möst began his tenure as its music director in 2002. He elicited wide-ranging reactions, from keen enthusiasm to perplexed disappointment. But the board was so sure of its choice that just one year into his directorship, Mr. Welser-Mösts contract was extended through 2012, an uncommonly long appointment in the orchestra world.

He is now in his sixth season. After his concert with the Cleveland Orchestra on Tuesday night at Carnegie Hall, the first of three programs, I, like many others, am still trying to get a real fix on his work. Mr. Welser-Möst gave an admirable and brilliantly played account of Tchaikovskys Pathétique Symphony. If the performance might have been a little Apollonian for some Tchaikovsky lovers, it was a refreshing break from indulgently expressive approaches. And Mr. Welser-Möst led an arresting account of John Adamss Guide to Strange Places (2001).

But the concert began with a strangely listless performance of Mozarts Symphony No. 28. You would think that a former Austrian choirboy who began conducting at 16 as a music student in Linz would have a native affinity for Mozart. But this was one of several ineffective Mozart performances I have heard from Mr. Welser-Möst.

The symphony, written during Mozarts late teens, is an affable and elegant score. Mr. Welser-Mösts performance was tasteful and restrained to the point of dullness. The playing of this great orchestra was often, and oddly, indistinct, with bass tone too heavy and violin tone too rich.

In Cleveland Mr. Welser-Möst has had some of his biggest successes in contemporary music, and the performance he drew from the orchestra in Mr. Adamss work showed why. The piece is a knockout. It was inspired, Mr. Adams has said, by a family trip to southern France. Local colors of the Provence region, from landscape to cuisine to tales of religious miracles, provoked Mr. Adams to write a piece that teems with wide-eyed curiosity and nonstop energy.

The score is built up, almost as in pop music, with layered tracks of materials: perpetual-motion riffs in the strings, restless volleys from the winds, impolite intrusions of percussion and piano, and more. But the sheer bustling intensity at the start is soon undercut when grumbling basses trade impish outbursts with groaning brasses.

At times the textures thin out, and the tempo slows down, as in one episode that sounds like a primordial dance, with lumbering, heavy-footed rhythms and bellowing blasts; I imagined an animated film with masticating dinosaurs. But the piece is driven by nonstop busyness and multilayered, wildly inventive instrumental colorings.

Conveying the organic shape of the music and bringing out details in its glorious din are the challenges of playing the piece, excitingly mastered by Mr. Welser-Möst and his orchestra.

There were striking touches in the Pathétique Symphony. The waltz in 5/4 meter was treated not like some breezy timeout from the overall angst but as a quizzical reflection. Mr. Welser-Möst delineated the striking way that inner voices of jumpy winds leap to different beats in different measures. The march movement was taken quite fast, with no funny business, everything clean, incisive and relentless. If not to all tastes, this was an honest, lucid and fresh account of a repertory staple, and the orchestra sounded great.

Still, this was another mixed Welser-Möst concert. After his appointment audiences were encouraged to wait and see. The wait goes on.

The Cleveland Orchestra performs tonight at Carnegie Hall; (212) 247-7800, carnegiehall.org.

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