FROM AROUND THE WORLD: CLEVELAND.(Review)

Bucking a disturbing national programming trend, Cleveland Orchestra frequently schedules repertory involving vocal soloists: not only concert opera (this year's Boulez Pelleas et Melisande will be followed by a May 2002 Siegfried led by outgoing music director Christoph von Dohnanyi) but song cycles, sacred music and oratorio. Two fine March concerts by music director-designate Franz Weiser-Most indicated that vocal bounty will continue in Severance Hall.

A somber if well-balanced program centered around Thomas Quasthoff's local debut (March 1) found the bass-baritone in sovereign voice and spirit for Bach's "Kreuzstab" Cantata, last heard here in 1957. Michael Slon's Oberlin College Choir lent fresh, suave support. After intermission, the theme of mortality continued with Shostakovich's harrowing Fourteenth Symphony, spectacularly played by the reduced orchestra, notably the bravura double basses and percussion. Quasthoff has the tonal and dynamic range (and certainly the dramatic conviction) to make a great effect in this piece, and indeed in the Mussorgsky song cycles that (with Mahler's) inspired and haunt it. But first he must improve his often approximate Russian diction. So too with Hillevi Martinpelto, capable throughout, if wielding a less distinctive sound than that of Galina Vishnevskaya (of whose voice the soprano songs are like rubbed images): where were the consonants? A world-class orchestra would not hire eminent vocalists with faulty German diction for, say, Das Klagende Lied; one had thought the day ...