Christoph von Dohnanyi's 18-year tenure at the helm of the Cleveland Orchestra came to an end on Friday night, and he went out on something of a high with an eclectic, inspiring programme. It began with Witold Lutoslawski's Musique Funèbre for string orchestra, a belated tribute to Bartok written in 1958. This is a masterly work: mesmeric in the restless shifts and slides of its theme, unstoppable in its mounting and then subsiding intensity. Here it began almost clinically, the cello lines winding around each other without pausing for thought. Still, the impact of the eventual climax was no less shattering for Dohnanyi's cool approach - the notes alone carry a density of feeling that needs little mediation. It is a piece that should be performed in Britain more often.
The next work, by contrast, was all fire and bedazzlement. Gil Shaham was the soloist in Bartok's Violin Concerto No 2. His playing was generous and full-blooded, bristling with the stomp of imagined Hungarian folk music; it brought out the tenderness of the concerto and also its sense of fun. If at times he overdid the forcefulness, in the context of such an exciting live performance it didn't matter. Underneath the seeming abandon, Shaham is a very disciplined player.
Dohnanyi had reportedly dashed off a brisk version of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony the night before, but his account of Brahms's Second was, during the first movement at least, unusually broad. The opening of the symphony was reticent, with plenty of space to blossom slowly but surely, so that when the big moments finally arrived they were monumental. There were passages of high drama in the Adagio, too. Dohnanyi was the dynamo of the finale, bringing out the clear, brash trumpets in the build-up to a blazing finish. The playing wasn't absolutely flawless - the ensemble came unstuck briefly in a tricky moment of the third movement - but it was close.
The overture from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro seemed an odd choice of encore, as it involved only about half of the players on stage. Still, Dohnanyi's delight in it was obvious - and after all, it was his night.
