On Thursday evening I walked down to Carnegie Hall to hear a performance of an all-Mozart program given by the Orchestra of St. Luke's under the baton of guest conductor Roger Norrington. Though the orchestra is based in New York City, this was the first time I'd heard one of its concerts in several seasons. As for Mr. Norrington, I don't think I've seen him on the podium since the 1980's, and I'm not quite sure why that's the case. I've always had a great respect of his abilities and own several of his recordings of which my favorite is Early Romantic Overtures with the London Classical Players. He remains the acknowledged leader of the period instruments movement as well as a renowned authority on Mozart and several other eighteenth and nineteenth century composers.
The program opened with the Symphony No. 33 in B-flat major, K. 319 (1779). It's a generally lighthearted work that belies the composer's unhappiness at the time he wrote it. Recently returned from a trip to Mannheim, Munich and Paris, in the course of which he had not only been unable to find work but had lost his mother, Mozart was desperately unhappy in Salzburg, a backward provincial town where he was kept firmly under the thumb of his tyrannical patron Archbishop Colloredo. What's even more striking is that Mozart only added the dark and gloomy third movement when he was preparing to have the work published in 1785. He was by then in Vienna, newly married and enjoying great popularity as an artist. The only explanation I can think of is that he felt the symphony to be too lightweight in its original three movement format and decided to add the menuetto and trio to give it more substance.
The next work was the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466 (1785) and featured British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor as soloist. At the time Mozart composed the K. 466 he was at the height of his popularity in Vienna. The concerto is actually the first of a several written for a highly remunerative series of subscription concerts. In 1785, he would write two more, the K. 467 in C major (actually composed the same month as the K. 466) and the K. 482 in E-flat major, while in the following year he would pen the K. 488 in A major, the K. 491 in C minor, and the K. 503 in C major. Taken together, all of them masterpieces of the genre, these constitute one of Mozart's greatest achievements as a composer. Of them all, however, the K. 466 was the only one whose popularity was to endure into the nineteenth century's Romantic era. It's easy to see why this would be the case. Despite Mozart's new found prosperity, it's a stormy work whose dark musings could not fail to appeal to the Romantic temperament. This is especially true of the finale, a tempestuous episode that moves from the home key of D minor to G minor before at last finding resolution in the key of D major, a change so abrupt it reminds one of the sun suddenly appearing as the storm clouds that have obscured it finally break.
This was the first time I'd seen Mr. Grosvenor perform - he's only age 24 - and the concerto certainly served as a great introduction to his considerable talents. I was also intrigued by the way the stage was set up for his performance. His Steinway, minus its cover, was put at right angles to the edge of the stage so that he had his back to the audience. Mr. Norrington then seated himself directly behind the piano so that he faced both the pianist and audience. The orchestra meanwhile was placed in a semicircle about the piano. I'm not sure why this was done or what advantage it presented.
After intermission, the orchestra returned to perform the final work on the program, the Symphony No. 36 in C major, K. 425 (1783), nicknamed the "Linz" for the city in which was written. Not that Mozart had planned beforehand to have one of his symphonies performed there. Finding himself unexpectedly a guest of a local nobleman, one Count Thun, while returning to Vienna from Salzburg, Mozart was caught unawares when the the Count expressed a wish to give a concert of his music and was thus forced by necessity to compose an entire symphony in only four days. There's nothing in the work, though, to indicate the haste with which it was written. Along with the No. 38, written two years later, it lays the groundwork for the final three great symphonies. Especially notable is the use of trumpets and percussion in the slow movement.
Before the concert began, Mr. Norrington addressed the audience for several minutes regarding historically informed performances. His argument was that the music should be played in a manner the composer would have expected and preferably on instruments that were familiar to him. I don't necessarily agree with this. I believe the music should conform to the standards of the era in which is played. In this way the music is open to new interpretations that are just as valid as those that prevailed at the time it was composed. Moreover, I feel that if Mozart were alive to today he would eagerly make use of the modern era's large scale orchestras. He only wrote for smaller orchestras because that was all he had available to him. And I'm sure Mozart would have jumped at the chance to play piano on a modern Steinway in place of the rickety fortepiano he actually owned. What musician wouldn't?
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