PASADENA, Calif
– Billed under the populist tagline “Mozart Forever”,
the Pasadena Symphony concert featured a program of uncommonly high
imagination – played with vigor, precision, and refinement under
the direction of maestro Jorge Mester – that is sure to occupy a
permanent place in the hearts of those who were fortunate to attend.
As regional orchestras go, the Pasadena
Symphony can hold its own against the mighty LA Philharmonic (even
surpasses it on a great night) and is, I think, light-years ahead of
the Pacific Symphony in Orange County.
In these financially uncertain times, The Angelenos could
take pride in having not one, but two fine orchestras in their
midst, as well as two full-time classical radio stations, while the
arts organizations in other cities are teetering on the brinks of
insolvency (San Jose, St Louis, Toronto all in desperate straits).
The key ingredients for survival are quality and creativity.
It is not necessary to put on the Ring Cycle or some
off-the-wall production to attempt to draw an audience.
On the contrary, by going back to the tried-and-true
masterpieces and injecting them with verve and new insight, people
will come in droves, as they did in Pasadena.
The Pasadena Symphony program features three
late works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Masonic
Funeral Music (K.477), Clarinet Concerto (K.622),
and the Symphony No. 40 in G-minor (K.550).
These three seemingly disparate works are unified by one
common spirit – Mozart’s deep humanity and abiding loyalty to
his friends. None of
the works was written for a commission.
The Masonic music was composed for the funeral of two fellow
Masons, whose Masonic Lodge Mozart joined in 1784.
The Clarinet concerto was a token of friendship and gratitude
for Anton Stadler, another fellow Mason, who had borrowed large sums
of money from Mozart and never repaid.
The origin of the G-minor Symphony is unclear, but the
profound human qualities that run through its four movements are
unmistakable.
The Masonic Funeral Music (K.477) is
possibly Mozart's finest Masonic piece and the only one that goes
well beyond its original context to have found life in the concert
hall. The work’s generally somber tone is conveyed through
descending figures in the violins, and accentuated by throbbing
syncopations in the double bass and piercing cries of anguish from
the oboe. The Pasadena Symphony played this music with polish and great
emotive power.
The A-major Clarinet Concerto (K.622) is
the earliest and arguably the finest concerto for the clarinet, an
instrument that the young Mozart fell in love with while traveling
in Mannheim. This graceful and lovingly written work belies the desperate
circumstances in which its composition took place, only two months
before the composer’s death.
Perhaps a hint of tragedy can be glanced in the haunting,
autumnal beauty of the Adagio, so eloquently played by clarinetist
Charles Neidich. Mr. Neidich
played with a smoothness of tone at all dynamic levels, and imbued a
thousand subtle colours into the melodic line which never for one
second lost its lovely singing quality – whether in the bravura
passage work or in the darker harmonic turns of the Allegro.
The final Rondo drew some truly exciting, delightful playing
from Mr. Neidich. The
mischievous dialogs between the clarinet’s upper and lower
registers were tossed off with an elegant insouciance in the
cheerful Rondo. The
orchestra provided an unfailingly sympathetic accompaniment
throughout, matching the soloist in wit and charm, never outdoing
him in volume.
Like the Clarinet Concerto, the Symphony No.
40 (K.550) is one of Mozart’s last and greatest works in its
genre. Written in Vienna in the summer of 1788 in a prodigious
burst of creative energy, the G-minor Symphony (along with its
brethren Symphonies No. 39 and 41) was, in my estimation, Mozart’s
attempt at expanding the Sturm und Drang of the Classical style by
infusing it with the newly discovered contrapuntal style of J.S.
Bach. The music was at
least fifty years ahead of its time and looked forward to the
Romantic symphonies of Schumann and Brahms.
The first movement, Molto allegro, opens with a
sweeping, impassioned melody for the violins, with agitated, hurried
accompaniment on the divided violas.
Personally, I’ve always found this melody amusingly
reminiscent of Cherubino’s aria “Non so piu cosa son cosa
faccio” from the opera Le Nozze di Figaro.
Maestro Mester coaxed some impressively rich sounds from his
Pasadena players. The
heated contrapuntal argument in the development benefited much from
the brisk tempi and the warm sound of the lower strings.
The second movement, Andante, is Mozart's music at its most divine. The lovely serene melody in the strings is graced by woodwind
obbligato in the form of falling-note figures, like the burbling of
a stream. If there are
signs of anguish in the development section, they are soon dispelled
by the return of the lush string melody, now accompanied by the
gently trilling violas (bar 76) like the murmurs of spring.
The Pasadena Symphony played this ‘aria without words’
with easy, elegant phrasing and a light, luminous texture.
The same chamber-music quality was again heard in the Trio of the
third movement (Minuet/Allegretto), where the mellow blending of the
flute, oboes, and horns together created an enchanting, otherworldly
effect. The final movement, Allegro assai, plunges again into the
emotional turmoil with which the symphony begins.
And the playing here was appropriately fiery and emphatic so
as to capture the deeper emotional drama.
Maestro Mester whipped up enough frenzied energy from the
orchestra to give the development a rigorous five-part contrapuntal
workout that it needs. Clarity
and precision were not compromised, though.
Each line of the fugato remained distinct from one another
yet organically fused as a whole.
The concert will be broadcast on K-Mozart (105.1
FM) on Sunday, January 6, 2002 at 8:00pm.
Truman
C. Wang is editor of Classical Voice.
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