Melbourne Symphony Orchestra concert 4 June 2010 - Mozart Magic

Featuring:
- Mozart Cosi fan tutti: Overture
- Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466
- Mendelssohn Capriccio brilliant for Piano and Orchestra
- Haydn Symphony No. 96 'Miracle'

Howard Shelley - Piano/Conductor

First Town Hall Proms this year. And Town Hall Proms = Organ recital by Calvin Bowman. That night he played Sinfonia from Cantata No. 29 Wir danken dir, Gott which turned out to be the arrangement of the famous Preludio from the 3rd Partita for solo violin. Next on the offering was Mendelssohn's Third Organ Sonata in A major, Op. 65. I enjoyed this 2 movements piece very much, the first movement sounded like a majestic Bach chorale, and the second movement more introspective in nature, and calming. Franck's rather lengthy and less interesting piece Chorale No. 3 in A minor closed the recital.

The title of this concert is your usual cheesy marketing programming, "Mozart Magic", and would infer that the night triumph would belong to Mozart's music. Sadly, it's Haydn's music who stole the show for the night.

Mozart's overture to Cosi fan Tutti started the concert, but the MSO was just getting warmed up for the night. While the woodwinds passages are beautifully rendered, the performance in general lacked energy, and the strings sounded muffled. It's a good performance, and yet there's nothing so memorable about it. After this short piece, the members of the orchestra stood up to have the seat arrangements fixed up. A piano is needed for the next piece and this which should have been clear from the program was apparently not so clear after all for a patron sitting behind me which uttered quite loudly, "what? that's it?". Anyway, Howard Shelley came back stage and with the piano positioned so that the audience faces the performer's back, explained the reason of this awkward position and also the glass cover that replaces the piano lid on the piano. To be succinct, the glass is so that he can see the woodwinds section, and help with the clarity and the acoustics of the hall. He also talked a little bit of Mozart's composition which was composed during the same period. He also played some excerpt of Mozart's 19th, 21st, 23rd, and 24th piano concertos.

After all that, he finally started the concerto. MSO was better here, but still lacking punch (for my taste). I always associate the d minor key signature to pieces with high tension. On top of my head, I can name Mozart's Requiem, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Brahms' 1st piano concerto, 2nd movement of Brahms' 2nd piano concerto, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Mahler's 3rd Symphony, Sibelius' violin concerto, Haydn's Nelson Mass, Bach's Chaconne for solo violin, Schumann's 4th symphony, Rachmaninoff's 3rd piano concerto, Dvorak's 4th and 7th symphonies. All of them are masterpieces which are famous for their high tension. My disappointment is that MSO did not play these high tension passages as tense as they could be played, the string attacks are not furious enough, I might say that they played the music just a bit fierce compared to how they would play a major key classical symphony, where I would have liked VERY FIERCE. Anyway, that's only my problem. The piano playing was fine, I enjoyed the beautiful 2nd movement a lot, although the contrasting episode was rather tame. Howard played Beethoven's cadenza for the 1st movement, as he did for the last movement. I like Howard's phrasings in general, and he did take some liberty in changing some notes in the 2nd movement to my fascination. The piano's clarity was much better this time, maybe because of the fact that it's a brand new concert grand piano just shipped from Hamburg (as told by Howard)?

Mendelssohn's piece was okay, but I couldn't say I enjoyed the performance very much. I enjoyed the arpeggios that started the piece, but from there it all went downhill. There were some passages in the piece that reminded me of one of Mendelssohn's own piano concertos, but I couldn't remember which one.

Finally, some remarkable playing from the orchestra. Howard brought some wits and energy to Haydn symphony which he didn't for the other programs that night. The highlights were a graceful minuet in the 3rd movement with the long oboe solo. The finale was played as marked, 'Vivace assai', the best moment of the night for me, really. And as always, a wise lesson for newcomers to Town Hall Proms: there's always encore after. You can kinda see it when David Thomas (principal clarinet) running back to the stage. I wondered what would happen if the audience didn't really like the performance and the planned encore would not go ahead simply because the applause is not long enough :). Anyway, Howard teased the audience if they would like some romantic music to end the night, and offered Sibelius' Valse Triste, but unfortunately, despite beautiful playing, no one seemed to take Howard's suggestion to waltz to this music in the concert hall.

Next concert: ACO playing 2 of my favourite symphonies: Schubert's Unfinished symphony, and Brahms' majestic 1st symphony.