Sunday, March 1, 2015

Mozart in Seattle

the Seattle Symphony Orchestra

Last night I attended a performance of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and was impressed at the high level of precision and the skill that guest conductor Jonathan Cohen was able to get from his group. The performance consisted of two pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his overture to the opera The Marriage of Figaro and his Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat, as well as the first symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven. I find it interesting that my strongest connections with Mozart’s music come from the Milos Forman film Amadeus. I first saw the film about a year after it was released, when a theater in town was showing a series of first-run films after they had already left the first run theaters. The admission was cheap, as they were shown in the small converted theater they had made in the balcony of the main theater, but I was still enthralled. In the film, Mozart’s opera met with a lot of resistance because of the nature of Pierre Beaumarchais’ original play being blamed for the cause of social unrest in France and banned by the Emperor in Vienna, where Mozart’s opera premiered in 1786 at the Burgtheater with Mozart himself conducting.

The overture itself is wonderfully dramatic, playfully soft at the beginning before thundering in response to itself. The melody manages to be both romantically sweeping and march-like at the same time. But the dynamics throughout are what make it such a joy to listen to. Mozart had originally planned a slow middle section with darker themes--which would have been wonderful to hear--but removed it before the premiere and thus the piece runs only a mere four minutes. Nevertheless, it is undeniably distinctive and the Seattle Symphony did a masterful job of rendering it. Jonathan Cohen is an animated conductor and seemingly wills his performers to excel. In the last couple of performances I attended, under principal conductor Ludovic Morlot, the orchestra was not nearly as precise, though it must be admitted that those were performances of much more challenging pieces. Even so, it is fascinating to see what a difference a conductor can make in the overall performance of a group.

As wonderful as the overture was, that was nothing compared to the virtuoso performance of the Mozart piano concerto by the young South African pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat was composed the year before The Marriage of Figaro. In the film, the opening of the third movement is heard when a brief portion of its performance is shown, with Mozart’s piano being carried through the streets of Vienna to an outdoor concert, and with him conducting from the piano. The concerto itself is full of the musical acrobatics that Mozart’s enemies in the film so hated: chromatic runs and scales at lightning speed, alternating with numerous trills and suspenseful single-note slow passages. At the same time the orchestra not only plays call and response with the pianist, but with itself, as Mozart liked to do, with strings and woodwinds alternating in the orchestra, and with completely solo passages by the pianist. Bezuidenhout is absolutely exquisite. He has an incredibly deft touch at the keyboard, seeming to coax Mozart’s ripples of notes from the instrument with ease. The third movement, with its foxhunt like melody, is the most memorable part of the piece for me and was better, to my ears, that the recording on the Amadeus soundtrack.

After the intermission the evening concluded with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C major. I have never been a fan of Beethoven because of the pondering slowness and dirge-like renderings of his later works. But I had a feeling that this early symphony would be more influenced by his growing up in the world of Mozart and Haydn than it would be reminiscent of his later works, and I was right. That being said, the work was still unmistakably Beethoven. Though composed only eight years after Mozart’s death, it presages the music to come, looking forward rather than backward, and bearing the distinctive mark of its composer. At times, the piece is wonderfully playful, something quite unexpected from the dour countenance of Beethoven that seems to be his popular image today. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I immediately ordered his complete symphonies and am looking forward to hearing them all, having only been thoroughly familiar with his Fifth Symphony prior to this. Overall, it was a fantastic evening of music and thoroughly enjoyable, and I’m especially looking forward to seeing a couple more Mozart piano concertos that are going to be performed at the end of the season in May.