Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra – Louis Langree, conductor; Magali Mosnier, flute; Xavier de Maistre, harp. August 15, 2014.

Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra Right (Seat P12, $39.50).

Program

Dance of the Furies, from Orphee et Eurydice (1774) by Christoph Gluck (1714-1787).

Concerto in C major for flute and harp, K.299 (1778) by Mozart (1756-1791).

Symphonie fantastique (1830) by Berlioz (1803-1869).

M|M always wants to squeeze in a lot of music into each of their programs.  Tonight’s was no exception: the three pieces were 4 minutes, 30 minutes, and 55 minutes in duration.  With an on-time start, and a short intermission, all that was done in 2 hours, quite a logistics feat.

I am ahead of myself.  In any case, the afternoon started with our leaving the house at about 4:30 pm.  Traffic on Westside Highway was bad until we reached Lincoln Tunnel, so the trip took about 1 ½ hours.  We did find parking on 65^th, and managed a leisurely meal at East Szechuan.

We got to Avery Fisher Hall at about 6:45 pm for the pre-concert recital.  Well, there was no recital today, instead there was a talk on Symphonie fantastique that started at 6:45 pm.  We made our way to The Rose Building, and managed to find seats in the rather crowded auditorium.  Even though I was fighting jetlag (having returned the day before,) I still learned quite a few new things about the composition.  The speaker fumbled a bit with the audio cues, but still managed to get his points across.  I will come back to this in the section on Berlioz.

The one aria I know from Gluck’s Orphee et Eurydice is “J’ai Perdu Mon Eurydice.”  Thus I was a bit disappointed that wasn’t the selection.  Come to think of it, it was unlikely an aria would be chosen for an orchestral performance.  Indeed, the selection with the Furies (demons?) trying to scare Orpheus away is as good as any.  The short piece was enjoyable, with some brass instruments placed in the second tier, and I was amazed at how different Gluck and Mozart sounded even though they were contemporaries (well, Gluck was born 40 some years earlier.)  In doing some background research on this blog entry, I listened to Callas’s rendition of the aria (exquisite), and a performance of the Dance by the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.  I must say the youtube performance is more along the lines of what I thought Gluck’s music should sound like: there is a continuo part in it.

Per the program notes (written by Hugh MacDonald,) Mozart may have started to write a flute concerto and a harp concerto for Count Guines and his daughter, who were quite proficient at their respective instrument.  The end result was a delightful concerto for flute and harp which was quite enjoyable.  Not being a player of either instrument, I can’t tell the degree of virtuosity required in the musicians (perhaps Ellie, who took lessons in both, can shed some light on the subject.)  What I could tell was the flutist and the harpist both seemed to have a lot of fun with it.  Again quoting from the annotation, “Brilliance, sentiment, and courtly gallantry are all found in this concerto, a fair reflection of the qualities Mozart felt, with some scorn, to be the predominant features of Parisian society.”  So Mozart may not have been particular fond of the circumstances under which he composed this music, but for an M|M evening it worked very well.

I have always been amazed how one single flute or a single harp can be clearly heard in an orchestra, even a large one, thus it was surprising that both solo instruments sounded a bit weak tonight.  Not so weak that I had to strain to hear them, but not strong enough that they sounded as equal partners to the orchestra.  De Maistre is one of the few men that play the harp, and he naturally was picked up by the Vienna Philharmonic.  (For the confused reader, the Vienna Philharmonic was an all-male ensemble until recently.  The first female member was a harpist.)  Both soloists are French musicians.

The movements of the concerto are Allegro, Andantino, and Rondo: Allegro.  The cadenzas were by Sylvain Blassel.

Despite having heard Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique live only once, I had considered myself reasonably familiar with the piece.  Be that as it may, tonight’s lecture added a lot to my understanding of the music.  While the Program Notes has a more detailed and somewhat different account of the storyline behind the music, the real insight I picked up was the image of “the beloved” as represented in the theme (idée fixe, obsession) used throughout the composition.  Also, in the fifth movement, the plain-chant Dies irae was used to great (and grotesque) effect.  The Symphony was completed in a short three months, although Berlioz used a lot of material he had planned for other works (e.g., The Ball was originally intended for Romeo and Juliet.)  One more piece of information: the harp was used for the first time in a symphonic work.

Idee fixe (obsession) used throughout Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.

Dies irae (Days of Wrath).

Given the usual size of the M|M Festival Orchestra, many extras were used in the performance of this large-scale work.  There was a fourth double bass and large percussion and woodwind contingents.  Most web entries mention the use of two harps, here we have four.  Interestingly, all their names are listed in the roster for the evening.

Before I go into any specifics, I must say I enjoyed it.  Being always on the lookout for the theme was interesting, seeing how the oboe (or was it the English Horn) leave to play off-stage was interesting, listening to the church bells was interesting; and the orchestra put in a spirited performance.

Interesting and spirited do not a great performance made.  And this was by no means a great performance.  While an additional string player was added here and there, the string sections were simply too small to hold their own against the orchestra’s other sections.  I felt particularly bad for the cellists who despite pounding away at their instruments simply couldn’t produce loud enough a sound.  I had this complaint before, but the violin sections seemed to be dominated by a few players.  On the other hand, I appreciated how coherent, urgent, and despondent the music sounded.

It is worth repeating the movements of the Symphony: (i) Reveries – Passions: Largo – Allegro agitato e appassionato assai; (ii) Un Bal: Valse: Allegro non troppo; (iii) Scene aux champs: Adagio; (iv) Marche au supplice: Allegretto non troppo; and (v) Songe d’une nuit du Sabbat: Larghetto – Allegro.

As with other M|M concerts, tonight's made for a satisfactory summer concert experience, and that is good enough for me.

Tonight’s tickets were purchased at a discount via Goldstar.  Anne will be out of town next weekend, and I wanted to get a ticket to the last series for this season, with Mozart’s Requiem on the program.  I checked the Lincoln Center website and saw that not too many good seats are left, so I bought a $85 ticket at the box office when I picked up the tickets for tonight.  I just bought a series of tickets to New York Philharmonic’s new season, each of them costs “only” $64.50!

Our drive home was as smooth as it could be, we got back before 11 pm.