|
Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra
Louis Langrée, Conductor
Jonathan Biss, Piano
Sandrine Piau, Soprano, Tove Dahlberg, Mezzo-soprano
Gregory Turay, Tenor, Patrick Carfizzi, Bass-baritone
Russian Patriarchate Choir
Concert Chorale of New York, James Bagwell, Director
Closing-Night Performance
At Avery Fisher Hall
www.LincolnCenter.org
Frank Daykin
August 27, 2005
The French musician Louis Langrée has been music director of the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York since December 2002. He is also music director of the Orchestre Philarmonique de Liège, a position he has held since September 2001. During the 2005-06 season, in addition to concerts in Belgium, he will conduct the orchestra on tour in Europe, including at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, Musikverein in Vienna, and Victoria Hall in Geneva. Other engagements this season include return visits to the London Philharmonic and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and his debut appearances with the Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi and Vienna and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. In Vienna in 2006 he will conduct the Camerata Salzburg in Mozart’s Zaide, directed by Peter Sellars, and a project with the Mark Morris Dance Compay, both as part of the city’s Mozart anniversary celebration. (Program Notes).
Twenty-four-year-old American pianist Jonathan Biss has already proved himself an accomplished and exceptional musician with a flourishing international reputation. He performs a diverse repertoire ranging from Mozart and Beethoven, through the Romantics to Janáček and Schoenberg, as well as works by contemporary composers. (Program Notes).
Program: (all-Mozart)
W.A. Mozart (1756-1791):Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, KV 466(1785) I. Allegro, II. Romance, III. Allegro assai.
Mass in C Minor, KV 427 (1783) Kyrie, Gloria, Credo (unfinished), Sanctus.
The Mostly Mozart festival ended on Saturday night with a concert devoted to two minor-key works by Mozart: the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, and the unfinished Mass in C Minor. An air of festive expectation suffused the sold-out hall before the house lights went down, expectation that was in many ways fulfilled by the performance.
Maestro Langrée led off with the dramatic D Minor piano concerto, the first of only two such concerti composed in a minor key. The soloist was the young American Jonathan Biss, who on this occasion was only three years younger than Mozart was when he wrote the piece. Biss comes from several generations of American musical performers: His grandmother was the cellist for whom Samuel Barber composed his Cello Concerto; his mother is violinist Miriam Fried; and his father is violist/violinist Paul Biss. Such a pedigree is a great opportunity for transmission of musicality and tradition.
Tempi in the concerto were unusually fleet and textures correspondingly lightened, compared to some of Langrée’s previous work this summer. When the soloist entered, some of the rationale behind this choice became understandable. Biss played with admirable clarity, delicacy, and simplicity. His finger agility was grace itself. However, the entire performance had a small-scale quality that didn’t reveal the unease and darker emotions implicit in the unusual key of the concerto.
Only when rendering Beethoven’s cadenza for the first movement did Biss begin to come out of his shell a bit more, revealing something more personal about his relation to the notes. I’m certain that an artist of Biss’ growing stature made a conscious interpretive choice to play the piece that way, and it may even be perfectly defensible in terms of historically informed practice, (except for the 9-foot Hamburg Steinway!), but he seems to have ignored or written off the grander, darker conceptions of this music that became so beloved of the later generation of Romantic composers, beginning with Beethoven.
Langrée’s orchestral control was astounding. He was able to elicit soft, delicate playing from the orchestra that matched the soloist’s conception phrase for phrase. I suspect they conferred on the interpretation, though I have no way of knowing how much. Mr. Biss was a substitute, though not a last minute one, for the originally announced pianist. At any rate, to have such ability at his age, and to have made such a momentous debut successfully, is a credit to this pianist. The audience cheered him enthusiastically.
After intermission, a different orchestra and conductor seemed to take the stage, though the personnel remained the same. Mozart’s grand, regrettably unfinished, Mass in C Minor formed the sole work on the second half of the concert. Added to the orchestra was the Concert Chorale of New York, augmented by the twelve members of the Russian Patriarchate Choir, and four outstanding vocal soloists.
From the outset, there was nothing small-scale about this conception or delivery of the music. Mozart’s absorption and transformation of the fugal practices of Bach and Handel thundered and pleaded, alternately mighty and whispering. Special mention of the two female soloists is in order. Sandrine Piau, a veteran of Baroque opera in William Christie’s ensemble “Les Arts Florissants,” was pure radiance in her easy, thoroughly musical handling of the “Et incarnatus est” and its renowned difficulties. This aria was composed specifically for Mozart’s new bride, Constanze Weber, making the Salzburg premiere of the Mass one of the most magnificent wedding presents ever.
The Norwegian mezzo-soprano, Tove Dahlberg, sang her well-known aria “Laudamus te” without fussiness and with sincere expression. Her vocal timbre allowed her to blend well without overbalancing Piau in their duets. Sadly, the two male soloists aren’t given much to do in this piece, but what they did have was well-sung. Blame it on Mozart and his penchant for the female voice.
The choral work was exciting and well-prepared, though the dozen men of the Russian Patriarchate Choir, grouped together on the riser in their ecclesiastical gowns, threatened to dominate the overall choral sound with their unmistakable dark tone. I mention this only because it became a virtue in the performance, adding to the drama of the interpretation in a way that a more traditional homogenized choral sound wouldn’t have. One can only speculate what Mozart might have done with the crucifixion and burial sections of the Credo and the tonality of C Minor.
Since Mozart did not set the Agnus Dei section to music, tradition has sometimes decreed that the music of the Kyrie section be reused, with the Agnus Dei words, to provide some kind of cyclical closure to this musical torso. That tradition was not followed at this performance, and the work ended with the second Osanna that follows the Benedictus. Judging by the audience ovation, not only the Agnus Dei, but a complete repetition of the entire Mass would have been not only tolerated but gratefully received.
|
