Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Ravel with Santtu-Matias Rouvali at Severance

The Cleveland Orchestra’s Summers at Severance series continued with guest conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali.  With the relatively young conductors guesting at Severance (Rouvali was born the year I graduated high school) one can’t help but wonder if these concerts are serving as quasi-auditions as the orchestra searches for a successor to music director Franz Welser-Möst, who steps down in two years.

Appropriately for a work composed as the 19^th Century dawned, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36 looks slightly backward – but mostly forward, and marks the transition between that composer’s early and middle periods.  The work is shorter in length than most of his later symphonies, but it boasts a larger orchestra and discards the traditional minuet in favor of a more energetic scherzo.  As with Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, his Second Symphony’s opening movement is longer and more complex than was common at the time.  As a relatively forward-looking work, Vienna’s conservative critics were ready to pounce, one referring to the merry, vigorous finale as "a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to die, but writhing in its last agonies and, in the fourth movement, bleeding to death."  There was plenty of vigor and merriment in Rouvali’s way with the piece – I use the term “way” instead of interpretation deliberately.  It was a technically polished, surfacy rendition.  The Larghetto was a pretty chain of melody but was missing the depth one would hope for this movement – the tension leading to the minor section was all but missing.  Meanwhile, Rouvali seemed to enjoy putting on a show with numerous extraneous gestures that seemed geared for the audience more than for the orchestra’s – or the music’s – benefit.  That said, the playing had all the polish one usually expects with The Cleveland Orchestra – but how much of that belongs to the players and how much to the leader?

There is something appropriate about choosing this particular Beethoven symphony for the program, as both the third and fourth movements have a dancing quality, and the post intermission works originated as ballet music.

Stravinsky’s ballet score, Jeu de cartes (Game of Cards), comes from 1936 and is a product of the composer’s neoclassical period.  Each of the three “hands” starts with a fanfare: the cards being dealt to the players – invisible players because in the case of the ballet the cards have a life of their own.  Most prominent is the Joker whose motifs are capricious.  Rouvali was more convincing here – it was obvious he knew the score inside and out.  He kept things balanced and moving in an appropriately balletic fashion.

The evening’s final work, Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from “Daphnis et Chloé” is a piece I’ve come to love again and again.  It’s gorgeously orchestrated: in addition to the usual strings, winds and brass, Ravel includes the triangle, tambourine, castanets, glockenspiel, two harps, and celesta.  It goes beyond ballet into the realm of an orchestral tone poem, and Rouvali exploited the orchestra’s huge dynamic range – from the hushed woodwind pianissimos of the beginning to the full orchestra crescendo that followed.  Here, Rouvali was fully in his element, leading playing that included gorgeous splashes of color, perfectly timed rubatos, and fortissimos that were plenty loud but never harsh.  It was a stunning performance that rightly brought the audience to its feet. 

But as convincing as Rouvali was in the Stravinsky and Ravel, his Beethoven was wanting.  As versatile as our orchestra is, they built their reputation on the core classical repertoire of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner – along with advocating for new music.  Based on the above and on what I heard last night, I don’t feel Rouvali is a match for Cleveland.