Classical Concert Reviews Cinci

@cincysymphony continued its 2025-26 season with a trio of early Romantic works by Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Under the direction of James Conlon, Music Director Laureate of the Cincinnati May Festival, the orchestra opened with an exciting performance of Haydn’s “Drumroll” Symphony No. 103, a work which the orchestra had not performed since 1997. The first movement gave small opportunities for timpanist Joe Bricker to demonstrate his fantastic improvisational skills through short cadenzas interspersed throughout.
Making his Cincinnati debut, Canadian violinist Blake Pouliot, substituting for an indisposed Renaud Capucon, joined for a high-spirited reading of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 “Strasbourg”. Composed in 1795, it may not be the most inventive violin concerto in the repertoire, but tonight’s performance was one of the most engaging, with Pouliot improvising his own cadenzas in all three movements that possessed an almost folk-like quality. The audience at Music Hall was then treated to two unique encores: a movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E Major and Pouliot’s own arrangement of the traditional song The Last Rose of Summer.
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 is one of his most sunny and optimistic works, yet Conlon conducted it in a style closer to a sweeping Verdi or Wagner opera. Occasionally in the slower portions, more intimate moments felt lacking, but by the final two movements became more focused.
While the CSO’s playing this evening was fantastic all around, Conlon’s leadership did not really connect as well as it could have. But an enjoyable program nonetheless.