United States ‘Summers at Severance’ 2025 [1]: Randall Goosby (violin), Cleveland Orchestra / Marie Jacquot (conductor). Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, Cleveland, 10.7.2025. (MSJ)
Mozart – Overture to Don Giovanni, K.527; Violin Concerto No.3 in G major, K.216
R. Strauss – Symphony in F minor, Op.12
Being a music critic means that you get to listen to a bumper crop of masterpieces, but there are disadvantages. For instance, sometimes being a little too familiar with the general repertory can inhibit one’s enjoyment of a piece. Make no mistake about it, the audience at the first 2025 ‘Summers at Severance’ concert received Richard Strauss’s early Symphony in F minor with warm cheers of approval. But to a listener with a wide experience of the classics, the youthful work reveals its influences without quite finding its own voice.
It is interesting to observe the development of Strauss’s compositional voice. In recent years in Cleveland, we have heard music director Franz Welser-Möst demonstrate the composer’s growth with works such as Aus Italien (Op.16) and Macbeth (Op.23). This symphony came before them and was the second of two symphonies he wrote by the age of twenty. The first one was never given an official opus number, though this one was anointed Op.12. Strauss was fond enough of it to conduct it on a few occasions over the years, though he never recorded it.
While the distinctive voice of the composer isn’t quite there yet, it can be glimpsed in places, particularly Strauss’s already developing taste for big brass chords. But there are also signs of a journeyman composer still living in the shadow of his musically conservative father, Franz Strauss. Many pages of this symphony echo passages from Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Bruckner and Brahms, and even composers like Goldmark and Dvořák are evoked in places. One voice largely missing, though, is the later Strauss we know and love. Studious and serious, the work could have benefitted from some editorial focusing, but it was intriguing to hear. Guest conductor Marie Jacquot brought a real commitment to the score, though she brought a much looser rein to the brass section than we typically get from Welser-Möst. She didn’t mind if the brass roared, and they did.
Interestingly, while Jacquot – currently chief conductor of the Royal Danish Theatre Copenhagen, and chief conductor-designate of the WDR Symphony Orchestra – directed the Strauss with a baton, she opted to use her hands for the all-Mozart first half of the concert. This gave the orchestral sound a soft-grained edge, the only slightly-reduced string section creating billows of silken sound. The esthetic aptness of such luxury is debatable, though it was of a piece with violinist Randall Goosby’s conception of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.3. Unlike the more intimate, chamber-music feel of Alan Choo’s Mozart Third earlier this year with Apollo’s Fire (review here) under Jeannette Sorrell, Goosby presented the solo part as a larger-than-life romantic concerto in a richly-voiced manner. Jacquot and Goosby united in giving the piece a voice of both elegance and glamor, which the audience adored. As an encore, Goosby played the delightfully colorful and catchy ‘Louisiana Blues Strut’ by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, an African-American composer whose name has been strongly on the rise since his passing in 2004.
Jacquot opened the program with a rendition of the overture from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, led with reserve and a close attention to dramatic accents. She ensured that the slow introduction never stalled in momentum, while the remainder of the piece was given genial room to sparkle.
Mark Sebastian Jordan