Wrapping Up Mostly Mozart

Never has the title of Mostly Mozart’s series at the Kaplan Penthouse been more appropriate than on Thursday, when A Little Night Music presented the last great work of the 19th century: Arnold Schoenberg’s string sextet “Transfigured Night.”One of the most moving aspects of “Verklärte Nacht” is its remarkable ability to re-create the atmosphere of the original Richard Dehmel poem, a startling juxtaposition of the frigid attitudes of polite society and the warm glow of inner beauty. The woman, pregnant, informs the man — who is not the father of her child — that they can never find fulfillment because of her past indiscretion. His response is just the reverse: The life within her will be exactly that fulfillment, and the three will become a family. The poem is edgy and daring, perfect for the rebellious 1890s, and Schoenberg’s marvelous sound-images should match it flawlessly.The Jupiter String Quartet — not to be confused with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, who perform in the same block at Good Shepherd Church — invited violist Teng Li and cellist Priscilla Lee to join them and produced a solid aspirational performance. There was much to like in this reading. Rhythmic coordination and level of accuracy were superb. Dramatic moments were sometimes enhanced by a small caesura that may not have been written in the score, but could be felt in the music. But the reading’s undoing was a palpable thinness of tone that left the more passionate sections lukewarm.Schoenberg wrote the piece in 1899 to be forward-looking, but he could not have predicted that musicians of the future would not be conversant with his style of writing. Around the same time, he played the cello in a dance-band ensemble led by Fritz Kreisler. A single listen to any of Mr. Kreisler’s recordings or compositions will instantly convey the idiom of the time, a generous vibrato and a portamento technique, a sliding from one note to another.But many modern ensembles eschew this type of communication as old-fashioned, and their students pick up this prejudice and extend it. On Thursday, individual solos were sometimes enunciated with vibrato, but overall the playing was dispassionate, even declarative. Those who performed the work for Schoenberg himself and lived long enough to talk about it in the modern era — one thinks especially of violinist Felix Galimir — strongly recommended a more fluid style. However, as the old guard passes on, their musical memories fade with them. So much more could have been done with this seminal work. There was no shimmering surface, no moonlit glow.Without Ms. Li and Ms. Lee, the foursome offered “Arcadiana” by the British composer Thomas Ades. Although the comment by cellist Daniel McDonough prior to the performance that the work contained “one of the most beautiful movements in music history” may have been just a tad hyperbolic, there was indeed some depth to the chorale-like “O Albion” — the work made its premiere at an Elgar Festival in the 1990s — and the deconstruction of a swirling dance was another interesting section. Considering the remarkable precision that the quartet exhibited in the Schoenberg, it is safe to assume that the squeaks and squawks of the remaining movements were what the composer intended, although the question as to why he would spend time creating them is still an open one.***Unlike Gustav Mahler, his rival in the nostalgia business, Richard Strauss lived to be an old man and could recycle his farewells to the 19th-century way of life again and again in such works as “Four Last Songs” and “Metamorphosen,” a study for 23 strings that opened the closing ceremonies of the Mostly Mozart Festival on Saturday evening. The essay calls to mind images of the bombed Dresden and was at least partially inspired by the destruction of the Goethehaus, with all of its attendant symbolism.The work’s poignancy might be a little more affecting if only we could ignore Strauss’s appointment as president of the Reichsmusikkammer — head of the State Music Bureau — once Adolf Hitler came to power. Berlin and the world witnessed Strauss conducting his new Olympic Hymn for those infamous games. The question is, for what exactly was he nostalgic in “Metamorphosen”?Music director Louis Langrée presented the piece in an interesting acoustical setting. The stage for the festival is brought out so that there can be hundreds of seats behind the orchestra. The sound is then reflected to the audience by means of a network of elliptical shapes suspended from the ceiling. Except on this evening, the back seats were all empty, anticipating the arrival of a chorus for the second half of the program. This shortening of the auditorium gave the place more of a chamber feel, a cavernous space transformed into an intimate one. Additionally, Maestro had the higher strings stand on one side, the lower seated on the other.The resultant sound was vigorously reverberant, adding a measure of institutional vibrato to the mix. The group played well; it navigated the many rhythmic changes of mood confidently and with noticeable precision. This rendition, however, seemed far from the emotional core of the piece, although hearing it live with such fine acoustics allowed the ear to pick up individual lines of development. Clearly, there could be no “Metamorphosen” without the previously composed “Transfigured Night.”Applying another definition of the term Mostly Mozart, Mr. Langrée ended the entire shooting match with the Mass in C minor, K. 427, some of which was actually composed by Mozart. If you remember your “Amadeus,” this was written during the period when Wolfgang had just married Constanze and his father knocks at his door.Mozart never completed this mass — there is, for example, no Agnus Dei — and left only sketches or pieces for differing ensembles as raw material from which much of the work has been reconstructed, some of this cobbling done in the 18th century and some in the 20th. But he did write two movements, the Gloria and the Kyrie, and they, along with several bleeding chunks, were given a solid reading by the orchestra and an attendant chorus and solo grouping.This was full-bodied Classicism, bolstered by a rather un-Mozartean penchant for fugue and weighty polyphony. The Concert Chorale of New York, not always the most disciplined of vocal ensembles, had a very good night. The four singers out front — Sally Matthews, soprano; Kate Lindsey, mezzo; William Ferguson, tenor, and Jason Grant, bass — all had pleasant voices that projected well in this experimental biosphere of chamber music writ large. At the end of the day — and the festival — this may not have been a rousing conclusion, but it was, more significantly, a rare and illuminating one.Haydn wrote 104 symphonies and Mozart approximately 40 (there is some scholarly disagreement), but during the regular concert season these works are conspicuous by their absence. Haydn’s large operatic output is virtually ignored. But I hear that next year Haydn will be the featured composer at the Mostly Mozart Festival, giving us all something to anticipate during a long, cold winter.

Wrapping Up Mostly Mozart

Wrapping Up Mostly Mozart

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