Correcting a Mozart Deficit
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When you really don’t know something, it’s best just to admit it. And earlier this year, an embarrassing fact emerged: I didn’t know Mozart’s music as well as I thought I did. The catalyst for this admission came while at the barre during a ballet class. My teacher bellowed, in that way that only ballet teachers can, “Feel the music. This is Mozart.”
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I thought I’d listen to the piece of music (which was the “Rondo alla turca” from the Piano Sonata, K. 331) at home, but a rude shock awaited me on the CD rack: My Mozart holdings were slim. Years of reviewing dance have brought me closer to composers used for classical and neo-classical ballet — Tchai-kovsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky. But somehow, I hadn’t spent much time exploring Mozart. What familiarity I did have was misleading: Portions of his work are so often used as background music in movies and bad restaurants that I could identify a piece of music without really knowing it.
Awash in shame, I resolved to correct this situation — and to do so by the time Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival opens, on July 29. I didn’t need to listen to every note or contemplate every thought that passed (or might have passed) through the composer’s mind. I wanted to hear and learn enough — on my own time — to no longer be an utter philistine. Now, with one month to go before the festival starts, I am felicitously well prepared — and aware that there is much more to savor.
My self-imposed, remedial education started with a quick hit. I bought EMI’s six-disc set, which has the straightforward title “100 Best Mozart.” The selected 100 tracks are, naturally, the most memorable movements from the best works. Initially, it was a refreshing and satisfying purchase because it includes all the goodies: the explosive portions from the symphonies; the overtures and arias from the operas; the piano sonatas; sacred music, and much more.
Ultimately, however, this vast array of samples left me hungry for more music and greater understanding. For the latter, I turned to the maestro of the Mostly Mozart Festival, Louis Langrée, who in one phone conversation unleashed a torrent of joyful, informative enthusiasm.
“In any period of music,” he said, “there are people who have more things to say than their technique allows them to say. And there arepeople who have technique, but nothing to say. Mozart has the two together.”
As a visual image, he offered an analogy of a painting and its frame: “With Mozart there is a balance, a miraculous balance, between the frame and the content. So even if you don’t have a special knowledge, you feel it.”
When asked about specific pieces to listen to in preparation for the festival, Mr. Langrée’s advice was, more or less, don’t sweat it: “He made so many masterpieces in so many different categories.”
Furthermore, arriving as a blank slate might not be such a bad thing, he suggested: “The feeling of novelty was a great feeling that people liked. Now it has changed very much. People love to come and hear for the 100th time Mozart’s symphonies. They accept new symphonies, but maybe not with the same gourmandise, or appetite.”
That concern for new orchestral music was a guiding principle in the 2008 festival’s programming. The opening night program contains a beloved work, Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, of which Mr. Langrée said, “I can write any line of any instrument, but I still discover things I haven’t thought about or felt.” And the festival ends on the Mass in C minor, K. 427. But sprinkled throughout are new works by the festival’s composer-in-residence Kaija Saariaho, from Finland.
“One should never forget that Mozart always composed the contemporary music of his time. To relate it to a living composer today inspires you to listen differently — even to play it differently,” Mr. Langrée said.
There are also a great many works in the festival by other composers, including Beethoven, Mahler, Schubert, and Vivaldi. “We shouldn’t forget what Mozart did to inspire successors or learn from predecessors,” Mr. Langrée said.
Thinking of Mozart as a person and a composer in his own time requires some reading, and the most significant advance in my learning curve came from a book recommended by a professor of music at Columbia University, Elaine Sisman. Knowing that I wanted a breezy read, she suggested Peter Gay’s “Mozart: A Life,” which is in the Penguin Lives series of biographies.
A Yale professor and a winner of the National Book Award, Mr. Gay writes with brilliant economy: In 177 pages, he delivers a quick but penetrating portrait. After reading it through once, I went back and used the text as liner notes (of the most erudite and illuminating sort) to accompany a borrowed set of Mozart’s complete works. The box of 170 discs in color-coded envelopes was somewhat overwhelming. Sure, if you’ve got all the time in world, you can start at the beginning and listen through to the end. But, as when reading the Bible, it helps to skip around.
During my studies, the Metropolitan Opera was performing “La Clemenza di Tito,” which will be presented in concert form during the Mostly Mozart Festival. Though the opera was an example of Mozart going back to an older form of opera, after he had already advanced the form, the flavor of his work was immediately attractive. The opera also illuminated the fact that Mozart was, in addition to a creative genius, a writer for hire: “It glorifies the monarch,” Ms. Sisman said. “It shows off power.”
One thing I skipped in this crash course was the movie “Amadeus.” Though I’d seen it long ago, it seemed to offer only tangential benefits. “It’s good as a movie, if you don’t take it seriously. There is a kernel of truth,” Ms. Sisman told me. “It cannot be taken seriously as history.”
With that advice, I decided to stick to the music and to follow the spirit of Mr. Langrée’s just-enjoy-it approach. Mozart’s music, after all, is there for pleasure. “It’s complex, but not complicated,” he said. “It lifts your soul.”
NOTE: The 170-cd set mentioned in this story was Brilliant Classics’ Mozart Edition: Complete Works, which is available at www.amazon.com ($112).