Conducting a smaller, leaner group of the Los Angeles Philharmonic musicians, maestro McGegan dived into Cherubini’s Anacreon Overture with bountiful zeal and directed a heroic, rhythmically vital reading of this dramatic work, featuring silken strings, soaring woodwinds and explosive brasses in heated crescendos – a popular feature of the early-Romantic ‘Rescue’ operas of Cherubini, Paer and Beethoven. 

Pianist and Mozart specialist Robert Levin is well-known for his fortepiano playing.  On the modern Steinway grand, he achieved the same clear, fluid phrasing with minimal use of the pedal or vibrato.  Mozart’s E-flat Major Concerto  No. 22 (K.482) was written in 1785, the same year that saw the premiere of Marriage of Figaro, famously dubbed by some contemporary critics as “an opera with a wind band”.   Therefore, not surprisingly, it also incorporates a prominent wind ensemble (in the Andante) that forms a delicate dialog with the piano (whose gently melancholy mood resembles Barbarina’s Act 4 aria from Figaro).  Mr. Levin’s playing was boldly authoritative in the opening Allegro, sweetly poignant in the closing bars of the Andante, and unabashedly cheerful in the Rondo-finale.  To show what a consummate, imaginative musician that he is, Mr. Levin supplied his own cadenzas for the concerto, and they were all delicious morsels in the faultless Mozartean style. 

Post-intermission, the pianist pulled out his bowl of tricks.  In the bowl were cue cards of musical fragments supplied by the audience members, from which Mr. Levin randomly selected four and made an impromptu sonata out of them – in the finest Mozartean style, of course.  It was an improvisation of such tour de force that threatened to make the Haydn symphony that came after it an anti-climax.

Fortunately, maestro McGegan got his own bag of tricks as well with Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 93, written in the celebratory key of  D major.   In the symphony, the baton-less McGegan coaxed and cajoled, using his bare hands, high precision, wit and humor from the L.A. Phil players – like a Stokowski with a sense of humor.  The congenial spirits were palpable in the music as well as on the faces of the musicians.  It was great fun watching him punch out the horns in the Minuet’s Trio, or allow a loud burp in the bassoon, followed by a pause (and a few giggles from the audience) near the end of the Largo.   Haydn is a composer of wit and humor, and he was well served tonight.  The audience all left the concert with a smile, despite the dreary rain storm brewing outside. 

For tickets to other Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts, call (323) 850-2000 or visit www.laphil.org
 

Truman C. Wang is editor-in-chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Pasadena Star-News, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily.