When the Boy Genius Made Fun of Himself
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Glenn Gould was fond of saying that rather than dying too early, Mozart actually died too late. Beyond the shock value of the statement, there lurks a cogent point. Gould was a passionate devotee of the early piano sonatas and argued that what eclipsed them in the public mind was the great output of the mature composer. Considering that Mozart was famous in his day not as a master creator but as a savant, it is interesting to speculate on how these juvenilia would have survived down to the present had he not composed “Don Giovanni” or the “Jupiter.”
On Sunday afternoon at the Mostly Mozart Festival, we got a taste of Mozart the boy genius as the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra presented a concert of works that Mozart wrote as a teenager in Italy. In Mozart’s day, the church had decreed that listening to opera was unacceptable during Lent, and so an entire industry was created to compose works to be used at that time of year. The most common device was to continue writing in operatic style, but to leave out stage directions in the score. Thus the creation of the Neapolitan oratorio.
Relying heavily on the works of Hasse, Mozart at 15 published “La Betulia liberata” to a libretto by Metastasio. This was based on the same story from the deuterocanonical Book of Judith as Vivaldi’s “Juditha Triumphans” (and, for those devotees of Feodor Chaliapin’s memorable characterization of Holofernes, it is also the plot of Anton Rubinstein’s “Judith”). For Sunday’s event, soprano Sandrine Piau intoned “Quel noccier, che in gran procella,” an aria for the minor female character originally cast as a castrato.
Mozart had already turned 20 when he composed “Il re pastore,” a piece already set by Bonno, Sarti, Hasse, Gluck, Uttini, Guglielmi, Lampugnani, Galuppi, Piccinni, and Jommelli. Ms. Piau sang “Barbaro, oh Dio mi vedi” in heroic style. Her voice is elastic enough to hit both the high and low notes, and her pitch control was excellent. I took the opportunity as I sometimes do to sit in the back of Alice Tully Hall, and found this fine singer’s volume a little low, but not inaudible.
Although many critics would choose to point out Ms. Piau’s dispassionate style as an item of praise, I found it tiresome. There is an entire school of singing in India called the Carnatic, wherein the most expert practitioners have expunged all emotions from their melodic lines, but early Mozart does not belong to it. Classical restraint is fine, but throw us a little crumb of feeling once in a while!
The Queen of the Night’s two big arias in Act I of “The Magic Flute” are so famous that it is easy to forget that they were written as burlesques of a certain florid style of Italianate vocalise. In fact, one of the big jokes is their being sung in rather low German instead of internally rhyming classical Italian.
Mozart is poking fun at a number of his southern predecessors, but also at himself, particularly the aria “Al destin che la minaccia” from “Mitridate, Re di Ponto,” written when he was 14. Here, Ms. Piau’s solid technique was tested to its core – and she passed with flying colors. The voice is campanilian in the high register, like a finely tuned E flat trumpet. Also, she could handle with no loss of intonation the occasional low tones thrown in at what seems to be the oddest – and most difficult to negotiate – points in the lyrical line. This athletic performance elicited the biggest ovation from the crowd.
For purely instrumental music, the Freiburgers offered pieces by Hasse and Sammartini that sound remarkably like every other work composed in Italy during the period. Staples of modern FM radio, these rather light efforts were presented with the most professional of musicianship. The orchestra is a period instrument ensemble without a conductor. Their leader, violinist Petra Mullejans, takes most of the concertante parts and is often echoed by another solo instrumentalist. The overall blending of the group is superb and historically accurate, the horns seemingly miles of tubing, the trumpets extra long in the bore, the woodwinds actually made of wood. In fact, the ensemble sound was very pleasing and the music toe-tapping.
And you thought that Mozart only composed 41 symphonies! The Freiburgers are already up to the Symphony No. 47, a disputed work that moved to a different number in the Kochel catalog over time. Again the performance was fine, even if the music was a bit simple and its effects obvious.
Hearing any one of these early pieces is extremely interesting and even fulfills the requirements to be considered scholarly. An entire afternoon was a bit too much, though it was also a bit too little.