Mostly Not Mozart
In 1995, Norwegian Radio broadcast a series of concerts titled Milde Mozart a rough translation would be "sort of Mozart" but I don't believe they ever copyrighted the name. The powers that be at Lincoln Center might want to poach this catchy soubriquet as they move their signature Mostly Mozart series ever farther from its original inspiration.
This season there are three composers featured. Wolfgang, of course, Ludwig van Beethoven and Osvaldo Golijov. There are two concerts one of Monteverdi and one of Schubert that were chosen because of their "deep personal meaning" to Mr. Golijov. And at Tuesday night's opening concert at Avery Fisher Hall, the highlighted work was by you guessed it. Golijov.
Even before the concert began, there were two indications that the featured music would be contemporary. First, the approximately 125 seats behind the orchestra, the prime spots billed by Lincoln Center as "courtside," were all empty, rather an embarrassment for the festival on its opening night. Second, the program booklet listed five musicians as soloists and four of them were percussionists.
Relegated to the role of curtain raiser, Mozart was represented by the only piece of his music being performed in this entire first festival week, a somewhat colorless rendition of the "Linz" Symphony the No. 36 in C major. Avery Fisher audiences are accustomed to their hometown orchestra botching its opening entrance, and so the timpanist's entrance before that of the rest of conductor Louis Langree's troops seemed oddly familiar.
Although the group overall was technically adept, this version was unexciting and relentlessly monochromatic, with only the Menuetto exhibiting much liveliness.
Paul Lewis is still developing as a pianist. His playing is gentle, delicate, and a bit shy exactly what you do not want in a performance of the mighty "Emperor" Concerto. Intoning quietly and riding the sustaining pedal, he would have been more at home with Debussy than Beethoven. Except for simply stopping in the middle of one run in the Allegro, Mr. Lewis was reasonably accurate, but his interpretation throughout was neither assertive nor grandiloquent. Effects like the famous music box section were negated by his lack of a steely touch. Maestro Langree, who had to endure a gala crowd that applauded between movements and chimed in with about a dozen cell phone interruptions, led a decidedly singsong accompaniment that relegated Beethoven to sounding like a child in the school yard. Was there ever an emperor less imperial?
Mr. Golijov's Azul consists of a few simple chords conjugated in a repetitive manner, followed by a deconstruction of their thematic material in a cadenza from the cello. Then the entire process is begun again, employing some new elementary building blocks. All is punctuated by a hint of a Latin beat (Mr. Golijov is from Argentina). The featured instruments all play directly into microphones, and their sounds are blended at a mixing board in the back of the auditorium. All seems pleasant enough in a superficial, "We Are the World" manner. But it begs the question: Is this classical music simply because the composer says it is?
The performance appeared to be quite good, although it was impossible to intelligently evaluate the playing of cello soloist Alisa Weilerstein, since her sound was so heavily amplified. Her emotional style of play, however, would be considerably more eloquent if she could curb her proclivity for gratuitous histrionics. The quartet of drummers, who were granted the freedom to perform without ties, seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves, while the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra itself just went along for the ride. Azul, with its tropical birdcalls and South American rhythms, could be compared with some of the more theatrical orchestral scores of the Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos. The composer who kept haunting my mind's ear, however, was Yanni.
