Another Afternoon With Mozart

The Seattle Symphony Orchestra

Yesterday’s performance of the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall was something of a mixed bag, but there was still a lot to enjoy. My attendance, as is usually the case, was motivated by Mozart. The program revolved around the last of his five violin concertos, Violin Concerto No 5 in A major, written when he was nineteen years old and still in Salzburg, and probably first performed publically with Antonio Brunetti at the violin, Mozart’s co-director of the orchestra maintained by their patron, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. The featured performer of this performance was Seattle native Simone Porter, all of eighteen years old herself. Her solo debut came with the Seattle Symphony when she was only ten, and she has since traveled the world and enjoyed a tremendous amount of attention and has been the recipient of numerous awards. The guest conductor for the afternoon program was Russian-American Mikhail Agrest, himself only twenty-six, who began his classical music studies as a violinist and has earned an impressive international reputation of his own.

The opening piece was a tribute to Mozart by Pyotr Tchaikovsky in which he orchestrated several obscure pieces, a couple of solo piano tunes, a choral number, and a variation on a theme by Gluck that Mozart had written, into a cohesive set of movements and titled it “Mozartiana,” Suite No. 4 in G major. Agrest is an active director with an interesting way of moving on the podium, though his baton movements seem a bit too fluid to follow, but the orchestra responded very well. The opening movement is only a couple of minutes long, but briskly melodic. The second movement slows down to a more sweeping minuet. For the slow, third movement, Agrest put down his baton and directed with his hands. This section of the suite was originally transcribed for piano by Franz Liszt and it was this arrangement that Tchaikovsky adapted. The final movement is the real draw, with several sections devoted to solo instruments, Judy Washburn Kriewall on flute, a wonderful performance by Benjamin Lulich on clarinet, and a stunning solo section by the first violinist Alexander Velinzon which makes one wish we could hear more of him.

Unfortunately, the actual piece by Mozart was something of a let down after the opening. Simone Porter is certainly a gifted violinist, but she lacked a gravitas to her playing that even Velinzon in his small moment in the spotlight was clearly able to bring to the instrument. There was a clinical quality to her playing in the first movement that she seemed to warm herself out of about halfway through, though never to the point of comfort. By far her best moments were in the adagio, the slow second movement. Here Porter could take her time and express herself a little more fully. During the final rondo, however, she seemed to tire out, and for all the technical brilliance of the solo section, to my ears there were some moments where she played flat with the ensemble. Things picked up after the intermission, however, with the final performance of the afternoon, excerpts from Sergey Prokofiev’s Cinderella. The cinematic nature of the ballet music was very well rendered with the percussion section making an invaluable contribution to the performance, anchored by one of my favorite of the symphony’s performers, timpanist Michael Crusoe. Though an uneven program overall, the Seattle Symphony never disappoints, and it was still a great afternoon at Benaroya Hall.