Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Severance Hall
Cleveland, OH
July 14, 2017

Beethoven: Overture to Egmont, Op. 84
Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67

As a respite from the sometimes problematic conditions of al fresco performances, the Cleveland Orchestra offers the opportunity to hear them indoors through the summer at Severance Hall (which, incidentally, was recently featured on CNN as one of the finest music venues in the US) in tandem with their usual Blossom residency.  Matters opened in auspicious form Friday evening, with music director Franz Welser-Möst leading an all-Beethoven program as a preview of sorts for the upcoming season’s Beethoven symphony cycle.

The Egmont overture made for a dramatic opening, apparent from the sustained introductory chords which which given with a glowering intensity.  The principal winds were particular standouts when in dialogue with one another, and Welser-Möst had taut control of the work’s sonata form architecture.  A piece of unrelenting Sturm und Drang, it was only occasionally mitigated by brief forays in the major, hardly enough to hint at the work’s jubilant conclusion.

In similar fashion to the preceding, the Symphony No. 1 in C major boasted a deftly-shaped chordal introduction, but otherwise this sprightly early work was worlds apart.  The theme of the movement proper crept in unassumingly, and burst with the self-assurance of the young composer.  A secondary theme was very finely given in the oboe by Frank Rosenwein, and with the Austrian on the podium, the orchestra sounded like a proper Viennese ensemble.  The genteel slow movement oscillated back and forth between playing in unison and various instrumental combinations in counterpoint, while the vigorous abandon of the third movement was a bona fide scherzo in all but name.  The finale opened in a stately manner, echoing the symphony’s beginning, only to proceed in unabated high spirits.

Beethoven’s Fifth, that rather well-known quantity in the parallel minor of the First, rounded off the evening, for which the orchestra swelled to 19th-century proportions.  Welser-Möst’s tempo choice was brisk and exacting, and despite the familiarity of this territory one never felt he was merely coasting on autopilot.  Rosenwein’s solo passage in the development was a striking moment of stasis in a world otherwise defined by searing drama.  There was a wonderful, burnished richness of the strings in the slow movement, and the winds were of note in the variation that perhaps interpolates La Folia.

In the penultimate movement, granite blocks of singularity gave way to delicate string filigree, although a somewhat more conservative tempo choice in the latter perhaps would have yielded clearer articulation.  This led attacca to the brassy exultation of the finale.  Welser-Möst opted for minimal dynamic contrast, which had the interesting (and perhaps intended?) benefit of making the ghostly return of the gesture from the third movement all the more haunting.  That mood of course wasn’t maintained for long in this archetypal journey from darkness to light, and there was no ambiguity that we had firmly arrived at C major in the extensive coda.  This drew a rapturous ovation from the packed house, and if Friday was any indication, next season’s traversal of the nine symphonies promises to be enormously rewarding.