May 19, 2009: Playfully aggravating Mozart

It is hard to recognize seasonal change from the weather in San Francisco, but one sure sign of spring is the beginning of preview events for the Midsummer Mozart Festival in the programs for the Noontime Concerts™ series at Old St. Mary's Cathedral.  These concerts do not preview the works that will be performed at the two concerts that the Midsummer Mozart Festival offers in July.  Rather, they get the ear in the proper spirit for listening to the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart both through performances by members of the Midsummer Mozart Festival Orchestra and through the informative remarks that George Cleve offers to the Old St. Mary's audience.

The first of these events took place today and consisted of only one composition, the K. 334 divertimento in D major.  Since this is one of Mozart's longest orchestral compositions, running about 40 minutes, Cleve was brief in his remarks, noting that the work was from his Salzburg period and that the first violin part was demanding enough to qualify almost as material for a violin concerto (which is why a few measures from that part have been reproduced above).  What Cleve did not mention was that this work was composed in 1779, which was a time when Mozart's relationship with the Archbishop of Salzburg was growing increasingly strained and Mozart was champing at the bit to get out from under the Archbishop's service.

From this point of view, this divertimento should be appreciated for not only its virtuosity but also its tendency to get under the skin of those who liked their music more predictable and more suited to either an incidental capacity or background entertainment.  In other words Mozart may have been looking for ways to provoke the Archbishop into letting him go elsewhere (like Vienna).  This strategy is most evident in the second of the two Menuetto movements of this divertimento, whose principal section sounds ordinary enough but whose two trios flaunt their unorthodoxy in rhythm, melody, harmony, and phrasing—defying listeners like the Archbishop to treat it as innocuous wallpaper.  This is Mozart mastering the fine art of being playful and aggravating at the same time, and that quality makes this divertimento one of his most memorable gems.

As he always does at the Midsummer Mozart concerts, Cleve had no trouble getting into the spirit of this work;  and his ensemble followed him in there with evident relish (evident in that one can often see when both performers and conductor are clearly enjoying their work).  One way to appreciate that spirit is through an observation that Yehudi Menuhin made in his memoir, Unfinished Journey, about what his own teacher, George Enescu, had to say about Mozart:

Mozart's music, he [Enescu] said, was essentially a music of syllable and gesture;  when I saw it presented dynamically and could visualize the situation behind each phrase, I would understand that even his orchestral and chamber works were built on the human drama and would play (or mime) it very much better.

Today's performance demonstrated this approach, and it bodes well for the two additional preview events to be offered at Old St. Mary's on June 2 and 30, not to mention the two Festival concerts themselves, each of which will be given at four separate venues in the Bay Area.