United States ‘Summers at Severance’ 2025 [2]: Cleveland Orchestra / Santtu-Matias Rouvali (conductor). Mandel Live performance Corridor at Severance Music Middle, Cleveland, 17.7.2025. (MSJ)
Beethoven – Symphony No.2 in D main, Op.36
Stravinsky – Jeu de cartes
Ravel – Suite No.2 from Daphnis et Chloé
Earlier this season, Finnish conductor Santu-Matias Rouvali stepped in to substitute for Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Möst. Rouvali got here again for the ‘Summers at Severance’ sequence with a well-chosen program of his personal, stuffed with sparkle and wit, and it actually made this listener keen to listen to extra of his work.
To say that Rouvali is a bit totally different from Welser-Möst may be the understatement of the century. Even Rouvali’s bow to the viewers was made with a flourish of the baton. As soon as the music began, he was elegant, theatrical, imperious and mischievous – generally concurrently. I’ve watched loads of conductors over time, and I’ve seen many whose grandiose gestures don’t have anything in anyway to do with the precise sound being drawn from the orchestra. That was not the case right here.
Rouvali clearly did his work in rehearsal to sculpt a crisp, daring sound from an orchestra that usually has a really delicate grain focus below its music director. Rouvali pounced on accents and phrases within the Beethoven, energizing and refreshing the music with huge vitality. Any conductor who can obtain that sort of alacrity can dance the can-can for all I care, so long as the music-making is alive, and that’s what this efficiency was, even with a full complement of strings. Issues of custom or historically-informed efficiency fell by the wayside as Rouvali inspired the orchestra to play as if they had been encountering the work for the primary time. Even the second motion Larghetto, arguably Beethoven’s least compelling symphonic motion, held the listener’s consideration right here.
After intermission got here a shift from classical to neoclassical with Stravinsky’s Jeu de cartes, which turns a sport of poker right into a ballet. The piece is witty, colourful and wry. Rouvali savored the quite a few humorous quotes of different composers’ music and delivered the shock ending with aptitude. It’s price declaring that simply over sixty years in the past, the composer himself stood on that podium and carried out the piece in live performance and for a recording with the Cleveland Orchestra that’s nonetheless obtainable from Sony at the moment. Whereas it’s at all times worthwhile listening to Stravinsky’s method of dealing with his personal works, he may be taught a factor or two from Rouvali about the best way to ship this piece with each precision and gusto!
The live performance closed with a unique taste of neoclassicism in Ravel’s second suite from his ballet Daphnis et Chloé. Rouvali delighted in Ravel’s sensuous orchestration, rigorously gauging the complete climax of the dawn motion to ship essentially the most brilliance potential in Mandel Corridor whereas deftly avoiding sounding harsh. Assistant principal flute Jessica Sindell achieved a languorous but remarkably saturated sound within the second motion solo, notes hanging out over the remainder of the orchestra’s sound, earlier than the ultimate dance erupted in a swift however managed whirl, notable for some breathtaking whiplash crescendos.
At a time when each visitor of this orchestra is being scrutinized intently as potential music director materials, Rouvali is intriguing, for he would strongly lower towards the same old ‘kind’ of conductor chosen in Cleveland. One wonders if he would have the ability to preserve such an interventionist type of interpretive strategy over the lengthy haul with out warping into mannerism. However there is no such thing as a query that this live performance was electrifying, and future Rouvali visits can be anticipated with curiosity.
Mark Sebastian Jordan
Featured Picture: Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducts the Cleveland Orchestra © Aireonna McCall-Dube/TCO
