July 18, 2009: Midsummer Mozart Festival, Program I

The first program of this year's Midsummer Mozart Festival, under the direction of George Cleve, was presented last night in San Francisco at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  The offerings consisted of two concertos embraced by an opening overture and a concluding symphony.  This was the Festival orchestra's first appearance in the Conservatory Concert Hall, and the setting was as conducive to them as it has been in the past to Symphony Parnassus.

The overture was from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's final opera, La Clemenza di Tito, K. 621.  The opera was composed as part of the festivities surrounding the coronation of the Austrian Emperor Leopold II;  and this may explain why, after his many ventures into new approaches to musical drama, Mozart settled back on the traditional formality of an opera seria, drawing upon a libretto by Pietro Metastasio.  The overture, however, anticipates a higher sense of drama than one usually expects from Metastasio.  Energy bursts forth with the intensity of the more verismo Don Giovanni (K. 527).  The action that ensures after the curtain rises on the first act may not be as intense as the midnight-seduction-gone-wrong of the earlier opera;  but this later overture definitely gets the juices flowing.

In this case, however, the metaphorical curtain rose on the concerto for two pianos in E-flat major, K. 365 (also listed as K. 316a).  This was composed in Salzburg in 1779 for performance by Mozart and his sister Nannerl.  Brother and sister had already established a reputation for playing four-hand piano music in a variety of European salon settings;  and the spirit of those four-hand works lives on in this larger-scale concerto, as does the tradition of it being a "sibling act."  Katia and Marielle Labèque have performed it with the San Francisco Symphony;  and last night it was performed by the Korean sisters, Yong Jean and Yong Sung Park.  Also featured were two Fazioli pianos, provided courtesy of Piedmont Pianos in Oakland.

For those unfamiliar with this brand, Fazioli is the latest in the line of "elite" pianos.  Among the instruments distinguishing features, the Piedmont advertisement in the program book observes:

At the heart of each FAZIOLI piano is a soundboard made from the same red spruce trees from the Val di Fiemme region in Italy that Antonius Stradivarius used for his legendary violins.

One may debate whether or not what is good for a violin is also good for a piano, but these were definitely suitable instruments for the occasion.  The Park sisters approached the music with a light touch, absolutely necessary to keep one instrument from overshadowing the other;  and the Faziolis delivered that light sound with crystal clarity.  There was also a uniformity of sonority across the two instruments.  It is unlikely that the two instruments played by the Mozarts had similar uniformity;  but, if this concerto was intended as an escalation of four-hand music to concerto form, there is good reason to assume that Mozart had such uniformity in mind.  This may well have been one of those cases where modern technology could do better justice to the music than more "authentic" instruments.

The second concerto on the program was the G major flute concerto, K. 313 (285c).  This was composed shortly before the two-piano concerto while Mozart was in Mannheim.  Some of Mozart's most interesting sonorities come from the wind family, and this concerto is no exception.  The string parts are supplemented by only two oboes and two horns, giving the soloist opportunities to blend with the orchestra winds to achieve some striking colorations.  At the same time Mozart has not skimped on opportunities for virtuosity, even if the cadenzas do not go to the sorts of lengths that Mozart allowed himself in his piano concertos.  The soloist for the evening was Maria Tamburrino, principal flute in the Festival orchestra.  Her familiarity with the ensemble may be one explanation for that excellent blend of sonorities that distinguished the performance.

The evening concluded with one of the more familiar of Mozart's symphonies, his D major "Haffner," K. 385.  As with the opening overture, Cleve provided a crisp and energetic reading from which all the details of Mozart's harmonies and counterpoint emerged in a clear light.  As a result, the familiar took on the freshness of originality, coming to even the most seasoned ears as if for the first time.  The drive of the final Presto movement was truly energizing, fortifying those of us who had to walk home through the Van Ness Wind Tunnel!