Mostly Mozart Festival - Week 1

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 23 August 2011 05:00

Written by Jack Angstreich

This year's Mostly Mozart Festival began with a special free, one-hour preview concert of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra under the spirited direction of maestro Louis Langrée at Avery Fischer Hall on Saturday, July 30th.

After a brief introduction by the artistic director of Lincoln Center, Jane Moss, and another by Langrée, the music began with that perennial plum, the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro -- played again at the all-Mozart opening night concert on Tuesday and at the repeat program on Wednesday -- and here conducted with a delightful briskness.

In commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the death of the modernist titan Igor Stravinsky, this year's festival will have a special focus on the works of that composer who, especially in his celebrated Neoclassical phase, bears an intriguing relationship to his illustrious forebear.

As a foretaste of this component of the festival, the program continued with Stravinsky's crystalline Symphony in C, here performed with marvelous clarity.

The evening concluded with a conservative but gratifying reading of Mozart's elegant "Linz" Symphony, repeated at the Tuesday and Wednesday concerts. Those programs were graced by some exciting additions.

The eminent violinist Christian Tetzlaff was joined by violist Antoine Tamestit for a bold rendition of the Sinfonia Concertante in E flat, while the sensational young soprano, Susanna Phillips, triumphed with the aria "Non mi dir" from Don Giovanni and was also strong in the concert aria "Bella mia fiamma ... Resta, o cara".

The whole of Don Giovanni could be seen and heard on Thursday, August 4th at the Rose Theater, in a rewarding staged concert version both conducted and directed by the magnificent Iván Fischer, with the extraordinary Budapest Festival Orchestra.

Nothing in this production was more impressive than the Overture, which set a standard in musicianship for the Festival that will be difficult to equal, although another young soprano, Sunhae Im as Zerlina, was a splendid discovery. Fischer was characteristically witty and erudite in an engaging public talk with Moss about the production, given on Saturday the 6th.

On the evening of Friday, August 5th, the orchestral program was preceded by a sterling pre-concert recital of the beautiful Mozart String Quartet in D minor, K. 421, given by the Ariel Quartet.

The evening concert proper, featuring the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra under the scintillating direction of the now ascendant Pablo Heras-Casado, opened with an engrossing performance of the magisterial Orchestral Suite No. 4 by Johann Sebastian Bach.

The orchestral forces were enlarged to modern dimensions for the melodic Romantic favorite, the First Violin Concerto of Max Bruch. A specialty of the still boyish Joshua Bell, the evening's accomplished and enduringly popular soloist achieved an enthralling balance of warmth and virtuosity at this performance.

Heras-Casado brought the evening to a thrilling close with a breathless, unexpectedly fresh account of another traditional favorite, the exalting Mozart Symphony No. 40 in G minor, KV 550.

At the intimate setting of the Kaplan Penthouse, the estimable Takacs Quartet gave a gripping one-hour concert in the late evening of Saturday, August 6th, opening with a lustrous performance of the exquisite Franz Schubert single-movement fragment, the Quartettsatz.

The ensemble concluded the program -- and an exciting first week of this Festival -- with an intense, absorbing account of some of the most challenging music heard in the previous days. The eccentric, monumental String Quartet in C sharp minor, Op. 131 of Ludwig van Beethoven is a work which exemplifies the difficulties of the composer's pathbreaking late style as perfectly as any, but these remarkable musicians proved equal to the task.

Avery Fisher Hall
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
132 W. 65th St.
New York City
212-875-5030
Runs August 2 - 27, 2011

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