By Elliot Mandel, Chicago Classical Music
May 25, 2011
“What do you think of these little chestnuts?” asked one concertgoer to another during intermission Monday night, referring to Music of the Baroque’s performance of the final three Mozart symphonies. “I could just hum along with them,” he answered himself.
To another concertgoer, Mozart “sounds like Mozart.”
The ubiquity of Mozart’s music has perhaps dulled our senses to it. Orchestras may program an early symphony to open a concert or a late symphony to take the edge off a contemporary work. Soloists of a variety of instruments have a concerto in their repertoire always ready to go for a fifteen-minute appearance. No matter how rich or engaging these performances can be—and there have been a number of remarkable such performances here in recent memory—they never seem to be enough of the soloist or the music. Mozart ultimately becomes relegated to the quaint, clichéd “chestnut” of the concert hall.
Yes, there is irony in wanting more Mozart when Mozart is so often programmed. But consider the acclaimed all-Mozart programs of Mitsuko Uchida and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The soloist—one of the finest Mozart interpreters—musically blends with the orchestra so that there is little to distinguish one from the other, and the music rises without obstruction. The immersion finally gives the music its due without defining it in relation to the rest of a varied program or serving as a soloist’s showpiece. Listening to Mozart has become too easy; in the hands of an expert ensemble, the all-Mozart program allows the audience to bask in the music, a reaffirmation of why we listen to Mozart at all.
Jane Glover afforded a packed Harris Theater that very experience Monday evening, concluding Music of the Baroque’s fortieth season. As Glover noted from the podium, the final three symphonies represent some of the composer’s most complex and inspired work (though the source of that inspiration has long been debated). In this spirit, she turned to the orchestra and opened Symphony No. 39 with a calmly enigmatic adagio before arriving in the allegro. The second movement unfolded in tranquility, though still moving forward into the festive atmosphere of the minuet and trio. The finale undulated between sunny and stormy as the orchestra relished the drama of the transitions.
The Fortieth Symphony takes a darker turn, its well-known opening melody emerging and receding in a shroud of sonorous string playing. The andante finds Mozart toying with the orchestra, juxtaposing short phrases against longer lines as smooth, melodic arcs are punctuated by chirps from the violins and flute. His playfulness continues in the minuet, the downbeats hidden in syncopation. Finally emerging from the murky first movement, the symphony concludes with a punchy allegro; MOB’s vibrant horn and reed playing contributed to the festivity.
The orchestra threw itself into Mozart’s final symphony, lending a rich vivacity to the music’s mini conversations in the opening allegro. The following movement is cautious; the orchestra seemed to let Mozart choose his notes carefully as if piecing together a sentence word by word to turn a simple lilt into a singing melody. Crisp bassoon and oboe playing dotted the minuet, while the joyous outbursts of the finale were evident on the faces of the musicians.
Glover and the orchestra clearly love the details in Mozart but never lose sight of larger melodic shapes. Repeated passages were never played the same way, either by the composer’s design or the conductor’s interpretation. Glover’s Mozart is not music to be blasted to the whole city. She does make sweeping declarative statements, her cadences are never pompous. Music of the Baroque plays Mozart in a way that invites the listener to listen, and to rediscover the creativity and nuance that makes Mozart so good
