The city

When I left Ottawa on 4 May, there was scarcely any green on the trees. In Windham, Ohio, where I lived until shortly after my third birthday, spring was springing the next day, but far from sprung. In Cincinnati later that same day, it was already summer. The vegetation was lush, the temperatures pushing thirty and everywhere people were in shorts and sandals.

I lived in Cincinnati from a few months before my tenth birthday until a few months after my eleventh. I disliked it heartily for reasons that had more to do with me than the city. Nevertheless, there were some good times. For example, it was the first place where I was allowed to wander freely on my bike, and I maintained detailed and accurate memories of the Madisonville area where we lived over the years. I was able to find my way around without any difficulty. I even brought a bike and relived some of the pleasures I'd had fifty years ago.

Ault Park

Parts of Cincinnati, Hyde Park and the Ault Park area for example, are very beautiful. I was taken aback at how wonderful they looked. I suppose a ten-year old is oblivious to that kind of thing. The grimmer parts of the city like Eastern Avenue and the Lunken Airport area are as ugly as I remember, and I understand that there are worse places not far off.

Perhaps my nicest discovery was the exceptional friendliness of the people. Indeed., I thought they were the friendliest I'd ever met until I spent the following week in West Virginia.

When I lived in Cincinnati, my interest in classical music was just germinating. I frequently asked my parents to take me to "the symphony," but they never did. Fifty years later, I finally went.

Music Hall

Cincinnati Music Hall, the venue for the Cincinnati Symphony, Cincinnati Opera and sundry other productions, is a sprawling, singular-looking building located a little north of the city's main downtown area. Built in 1878, it includes the 3,516-seat Springer Auditorium, a large ballroom said to be the second largest convention space in the city and various smaller spaces.

Cincinnati Music Hall

The architectural integrity of the building has been preserved over the years, even while acoustical adjustments have been effected. The numerous sound reflectors behind, around and above the stage, though they have a modern look about them, harmonize beautifully with the nineteenth-century design of the auditorium.

Springer Auditorium has a long orchestra (the main floor, not the band of musicians) and a pair of horseshoe-shaped balconies. If one were sitting at the back of one of these balconies, it would be quite a distance to the stage, though I got the impression that the sound would still be good. At the ends of the horseshoes, there are sections with very poor sight lines, though the price of these is on the order of five or six U.S. dollars. To put this in perspective, the cheapest seats at NACO main series concerts cost $27 Canadian.

My seat struck me as ideal. It was located three sections from one of the ends of the first balcony, about four rows from the rail. It commanded a superb view of the orchestra, conductor and soloist. The only seats comparable at the National Arts Centre would be some of the better boxes. The sound was of direct clarity that I've rarely encountered in concert halls. The sound in the National Arts Centre's Southam Hall is balanced electronically and, while good, it cannot compare with the openness of Springer Auditorium.

A complimentary supper was served an hour before the concert's 7:30 beginning. The atmosphere was cheerful with people in generally casual dress sitting on the steps outside and in the staircases inside.

The Concert

The Cincinnati Symphony is a full-size orchestra of international calibre. Founded in 1895, it is the fifth oldest orchestra in the United States. Its music directors have included, among others, Leopold Stokowsky, Eugène Ysaÿe, Fritz Reinner, Eugene Gossens and Thomas Schippers. Paavo Järvi assumed the post in 2001.

There was a good crowd in Music Hall. Given that CSO programs are scheduled in threes rather than pairs, there must be an uncommonly large number of people in Cincinnati who enjoy live orchestral music. Incidentally, the concerts are given on an unusual schedule: 7:30 Thursdays, 11:00 a.m. Fridays and 8:00 p.m. on Saturdays.

The concert I attended was conducted by Music Director Järvi and featured pianist Yefim Bronfman in a program of Lutoslawski, Prokofiev and Beethoven.

The opening work, Lutoslawski's Symphonic Variations, highlighted what may be the orchestra's greatest strength, a razor-sharp precision of ensemble. It was a precision which our National Arts Centre Orchestra only occasionally achieves. Other technical matters, intonation and the like, were well in hand too, and the performance had an excellent overall shape and conviction.

It is difficult to compare the CSO with the NACO because of the difference in size, and possibly unfair as well. The NACO's sound is electronically enhanced, though the Centre doesn't like to hear it put quite that way. In any case, the comparison was inevitable for me.

Each of the CSO's sections is very good, but none is outstanding in the way that the NACO winds and, more recently, strings have become. One cannot fault the string sound in any way, but neither can one get very excited about it. The CSO wind ensemble is well-balanced, well-tuned and well-mannered. But it doesn't have any particular character, nor is the solo playing usually more than very competent.

Pianist Bronfman was featured in a high-voltage, gripping account of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor. The soloist, conductor and orchestra were unified in their interpretation of and commitment to this too-seldom heard work. Bronfman performed Prokofiev's Sonata no. 7 in Ottawa a year or two ago, driving the audience to a frenzy. If the Cincinnati audience didn't respond quite that strongly to the concerto, it was enthusiastic enough to elicit an encore. I believe the encore was the last movement of the Sonata no. 7, but I haven't been able to confirm that.

The program concluded with Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A Major, in a reading that was fairly generic, but quite good. It was more satisfying than the NACO's reading under Pinchas Zukerman a week and a half later, but not so good as the latter would have been had its grasp been equal to its reach.

Järvi conducted the symphony with no breaks. The last beat of each movement was followed immediately by the first beat of the next. It was interesting to hear it done that way, but not entirely convincing.

One thing I particularly liked about the presentation of the concert was that the male musicians wore uniform business suits and ties rather than white tie and tails. The latter have always struck me as overblown and pretentious, at least in the context of a regular orchestral concert. The women wore various black outfits, much as they do in the NACO.

I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. It made me wish I could stay longer in Cincinnati, but I was off the next morning for Pittsburgh where I would shortly hear that city's formidable symphony orchestra.

A pleasant post script

In recent years the Cincinnati Symphony has been mired in debt. That hardly makes it unique among North American orchestras, but its financial difficulties were apparently more serious than most.

The morning after the concert I was having my last Cincinnati meal, breakfast in a nice neighbourhood restaurant in Hyde Park, when I spied a headline on the front page of the Cincinnati Enquirer: Buying a copy, I learned that an anonymous donor has agreed to provide a one-time gift to retire the CSO's accumulated deficit. This was good news indeed and sent me on my way with a lightened heart. I even tried to convince myself that the donor had timed the gift in honour of my visit, but I'm afraid I didn't get very far with that notion.