Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali is a performer in every sense of the word. He’s an acrobat on the podium, striking precarious balances and using his entire body to shape the sound. He wields his baton like a wizard casting spells, with circular flourishes drawing out delicate details and sweeping arcs conjuring surging dynamics. In a guest appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra, he also showed an impressive command of difficult material and a willingness to experiment that didn’t always work.
The highlight of the concert was Stravinsky’s Jeu de cartes (Game of Cards), a short ballet that features a lively cast of playing cards come to life and unpredictable turns of instrumentation in almost every bar. Rouvali handled it with aplomb, combining fine technical mastery with a refreshing spontaneity that gave the piece both depth and light-hearted appeal. The playing was notably precise, in particular some evocative work from the flutists and a soaring trumpet solo. And Rouvali’s natural sense of rhythm came to the fore, though one might have wished for more fire in the dances, which at times seemed too polite. Still, vivid colors and an underlying hint of creative tension gave the piece a compelling through line – no small accomplishment in such an eclectic work – that captured the composer’s spirit of invention and audacity, complete with his sly references to Beethoven, Rossini and other composers.
The evening got off to a shaky start with a bright, animated rendition of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 2 in D major that did not have the same technical finesse. With a small version of the orchestra spread wide across a large stage, the strings and woodwinds were slightly out of synch at times, giving the sound a ragged edge. The individual sections were golden – crisp, animated woodwinds, strings in an array of shadings that offered strong contrasts. And Rouvali gave the music an inner pulse that bordered on thrilling. But the physical arrangement of the players onstage offset a tight performance, adding buoyancy to the music at the cost of precision.
Stravinsky got the conductor and orchestra back on track for a radiant finale, the Second Suite from Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. Rouvali did expert work creating textures and modulating the oscillating sound and, in particular, keeping the late assault of rat-a-tat percussion perfectly clear and clean. Most impressive, however, was the way he showcased the suite’s many faces and influences – choreographic, realistic, impressionistic, pastoral, jazzy – all neatly blended into a seamless whole. The music had both grandeur and intimacy, in the end feeling less like a ballet than a grand tour of the composer’s oeuvre, dazzling in its scope and, under Rouvali’s baton, richly expressive and highly entertaining.
For all that, the hallmark of the evening was the absolute transparency in the sound, no matter how many musicians were onstage. In all three pieces, it was possible to hear individual instruments, not an easy achievement with even the best orchestras. Rouvali was a percussionist before he became a conductor, and in some ways still approaches his work like an instrumentalist. “As a conductor, I play the orchestra,” he likes to say. That he does, and very well.
