Wolfgang Mozart and Richard Strauss at Severance

The 2025 Summers at Severance series kicked off with guest conductor Marie Jacquot leading a program of Mozart and Richard Strauss.  It was a contrasting concert with both große kleine Kunst and kleine große Kunst.

The concert began with a brisk rendition of Mozart’s Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527.  It’s interesting to me that such a consequential opera has such a brief overture – yet it beautifully encapsulates the whole work.  The performance was immaculate and slightly small scaled, as would have befitted an opera house orchestra from Mozart’s time.

Violinist Randall Goosby then joined conductor and orchestra for Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 216.  Goosby brought flawless technique, a sweetly vocal tone, and a welcome avoidance of HiP mannerisms to his performance.  The second movement in particularly flowed beautifully – “like oil,” as Mozart frequently wrote in his letters to his father.  It was interesting to note that the work doesn’t end with a bang like so many of Mozart’s concertos, but rather disappears wittily.  Goosby’s and the orchestra’s performance were warmly received, and the soloist played a gorgeous encore: Louisiana Blues by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.

Both the Mozart works were relatively brief, an example of große kleine Kunst – i.e., great art in small form.  I’d never heard Richard Strauss’s Symphony in F minor previous to tonight – indeed, this is the first time the Cleveland Orchestra has presented the 1884 work.  Think of that: the work was premiered the year Harry S. Truman was born – and not heard locally until last night.  The Symphony, at 45 minutes long, is a textbook example of kleine große Kunst – a large work of art with relatively small merit.  I don’t mean to imply that the work is of zero merit, but it barely hints at the greatness that lay in Strauss’s future.  One hears influences by Schumann and Brahms in the work, without the conciseness of form that the latter brought to his symphonies.  There are themes aplenty, but they are not very well developed.  On the other hand, the symphony demonstrates Strauss’ mastery of orchestration.  Still, it’s an impressive piece for a barely 20-year-old composer which hints at far greater things to come.  But in the end, the symphonic whole amounted to less than the sum of its four movements.  Jacuot, a gifted conductor, made as persuasive a case for the work as anyone could.  Whatever the work’s shortcomings, I hope Cleveland audiences won’t have to wait until 2166 to hear it again.

The house was well filled with an attentive mix of familiar and unfamiliar faces, with applause between each of the movements of the concerto and the symphony.