Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra – Louis Langree, conductor; Steven Osborne. August 9, 2019.

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra (Seat K114, $52.50).

Pre-Concert Recital

Sonata in E minor, Hob. XVI:34 (c. 1780) by Haydn.

Daisies, Op. 38, No. 3 (1916) by Rachmaninoff.

Etude-tableau in D minor, Op. 39, No. 8 & 9 (1916-17) by Rachmaninoff.

Yi-Nuo Wang, Piano

Program

Overture in D manor (1777) by Haydn (1732-1809).

Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major (1957) by Shostakovich (1906-1975).

Moz-Art a la Haydn (1977) by Schnittke (1934-1998).

      Ruggero Allifranchini and Laura Frautschi, violins

Symphony No. 35 in D major (“Haffner”) (1782) by Mozart (1756-1791).

The main concert has two classical pieces bookending two pieces by Russian composers.  One usually doesn’t associate either Shostakovich or Schnittke with Haydn or Mozart, but the Annotator definitely made a plausible (albeit short) case for such a sentiment.

The very short (5 minute) overture is probably interesting in its own right, and it also allow the (not too) late-comers a chance to be seated.

If the program didn’t state the composer of the piano concerto was Shostakovich, most people in the audience probably wouldn’t be able to guess the authorship.  For one, the melodies were easy to get, and quite traditional in their tonality and singability.  The piano sounded percussive quite often, and produced a “pitter-patter” effect that was interesting and pleasant.  It wasn’t an easy piece by any measure, and Osborne dispatched the notes with ease.  The interplay with the orchestra was good, although the orchestra was mostly in the role of accompanist.  As far as I could tell, there was only one cadenza (by Shostakovich), which sounded like a flourish by the soloist. The short concerto consists of three movements: Allegro, Andante, and Finale: Allegro.

Steven Osborne after performing Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto.

The audience’s enthusiastic applause ended after a couple of curtain calls.  As people were getting ready to take a break, Osborne came out to do a piece that had quite a bit of jazz element to it.  And the piccolo player – who usually got little work as second flutist – certain earned her pay on this piece.

Our first encounter with Osborne was in Singapore, where he played the Britten piano concerto.  That was 2013.

If I connect my iPod to my car the first song that comes up would be a violin concerto by Schnittke (by virtue of his first name being Alfred).  I didn’t know he was Russian.  The 12-minute piece had only string players (maybe 15?) with Allifranchini and Frautschi listed as the leads.  It began in complete darkness (well, the Exit signs are always lit) with only Langree visible.  I don’t know how to describe Schnittke’s violin concerto, and I must have heard it many times.  I won’t even attempt to describe this one.  Visually the violins and violas move about, with one episode where the leads scared the others back to where they were originally.  And the piece ended with the violins and violas exiting the stage.  Somehow this reminded me of something I had written about, and a search of my blog found an entry on the same piece in 2014, with same cast of characters.  I must say that writeup was better than this one, getting lazy with age here.

Langree with Allifranchini and Frautschi.

Allifranchini’s violin actually sounded very good, Frautschi’s was a bit weak.

The Haffner Symphony was distilled by a serenade Mozart wrote for patrons in Salzburg after he moved to Vienna, in celebration of the Haffner family being elevated to aristocracy.  Mozart subsequently reduced and modified the score to this symphony; I guess he was also a recycler, although not nearly as much as Haydn did, from what I can tell.  The movements are Allegro con spirit, Andante, Menuetto, and Presto.

I expected better from the orchestra, especially under Langree.  The whole thing just sounded muddled, which in my view is the cardinal sin in a Mozart performance.  To be fair, there were quite a few enjoyable moments as Mozart music genius came through nonetheless.

The whole cast for Mozart's Haffner Symphony.

For my German class (Freshman in college) we had to read these simple biographies on people like Mozart and Goethe.  I still remember Mozart getting a cold shoulder from Haydn when he first moved to Vienna.  The Playbill describes the two as “two composers strongly linked by personal friendship, …”

We managed to see all MMFO performances this season.  The overall season didn’t quite meet the high hope I had at the beginning of the first concert; however, they were worth going to, and we lucked out with weather and traffic this season.

The pre-concert pianist Wang was born in Beijing and started piano lessons at four.  She is now a student at Julliard.  The Haydn sonata was about 10 minutes long and consists of Presto, Adagio, and Finale: Molto vivace.  The Rachminoff pieces were performed without pause, so I had trouble telling when one stopped and the other began.

Yi-Nuo Yang was the pre-concert recitalist.

Summer Friday afternoon traffic into New York can be brutal.  We took the train in, and the concert ended early enough that we caught the 9:38 pm train back to New Jersey.

Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra – Louis Langree, conductor; Joshua Bell, violin. August 6, 2019.

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra (Seat V7, $52.50).

Pre-Concert Recital

Alla Tarantella, from Five Pieces for String Quartet (1923) by Schulhoff (1894-1942).

Lento, from Cypresses (1865) by Dvorak.

Doina Oltului, Traditional Romanian (arr. Ljova, after Dinicu).

Budget Bulgar (2005) by Ljova (b. 1978).

Brooklyn Rider Quartet: Johnny Gandelsman, violin; Colin Jacobsen, violin; Nicholas Cords, viola; Michael Nicolas, cello.

Program

Symphony No. 38 in D major (“Prague”) (1786) by Mozart (1756-1791).

Dances of Galanta (1933) by Kodaly (1882-1967).

Violin Concerto in A minor (1879) by Dvorak (1841-1904).

As critical as I was about the last concert I attended, I wanted to heap a lot of praise on tonight’s concert.  Not only was the program well-performed, it was also a lot more exciting.

While Mozart’s Prague Symphony is popular, it is not as well-known as the Jupiter, which I heard on Sunday.  Tonight’s performance was head-and-shoulder better, a conclusion I drew a few measures into the piece.  The crispness was there, the contrast was there, the lightness was there; and – above all – the coherence was there.  I was happily following along as the orchestra went about its journey.  Langree was as energetic as Fischer, but managed to elicit a much better response from the orchestra.

The Orchestra had a delightful performance of Mozart's Prague Symphony.

One of the observations I have is concert pieces come in and out of vogue.  Dvorak’s violin concerto is a case in point.  I had not heard one for so long that I didn’t remember how it sounded (not that I was trying hard to remember it).  A search of this blog indicated that the one time I heard was performed by Sarah Chang, in 2005.

It came back to me rather quickly as soon as the piece started.  I was simply in awe of how the whole piece sounded.  This is a very difficult piece to play, it requires superb technical skills from the soloist, and there are very few breaks for him (in this case) during the entire concerto; on top of that, there is no emotional pause – in Bell’s telling tonight it was anger nearly the whole time.  Now Bell did have a slip up here or there, I was impressed with how he managed all that, and he didn’t even miss the high notes, which in the past he had problems with.  He now produces such a sweet and lovely sound few others can match; of course, he has a great Strad at his disposal, but many others do also.

Joshua Bell acknowledging the audience enthusiasm after an exhilarating performance of Dvorak's Violin Concerto.

As encore he and the orchestra played an adaptation of Chopin’s Op. 9 Nocturne (No. 2?) which offered a contrast to the Dvorak concerto.  It was gentle, inward looking, and had a dose of virtuoso elements.  Chopin didn’t write any music for the violin, and I thought if he had done so, it would sound like the piece we heard tonight.

Sandwiched between the two pieces were five dances by Kodaly (Lento; Allegretto moderato; Allegro con moto, grazioso; Allegro; and Allegro Vivace).  Kodaly and Bartok traversed the Hungarian countryside collecting folk music (I didn’t know they did it together), and the dances certainly sounded very Hungarian.  Kodaly did live in Galanta, a town about 35 miles east of Bratislava, for a few years.  Gypsy music (not sure if it is an acceptable nowadays) is nice to listen to, but by the end of the 17 or so minute program I thought we have had enough.

The pre-concert group Brooklyn Rider is by most measures a string quartet.  It claims to “offer eclectic repertoire in gripping performances that continue to attract legions of fans and draw rave reviews from classical, rock, and world music critics alike.”  Quite a statement, and I am not sure why they didn’t call themselves brooklyn rider (lower case) to sound even hipper.

Brooklyn Rider.

While they didn’t quite live up to that description, the very short program was quite interesting.  And the pieces did add to the Eastern Europe feel of the evening.  Erwin Schulhooff’s Alla Tarantella was one of five moments (the others are “alla” tango, Viennese waltz, serenade, and Czeca).  Dvorak’s Lento is arranged from his Cypress song cycle, and may be a tribute to his unrequited lover Josefina, who had already died.  Ljova is the pen name of Lev Zhurbin, and the two pieces are in the styles of Romanian music and klezmer (I had to look this up, it means Middle Ages Jewish folk music).  Certain the Romanian piece reminded me of Zigeunerweisen, and contributed to my feeling there was too much Gypsy this evening.

When we looked at the orchestra listing in the Playbill, we found Laura Frautschi listed as the concertmaster, and couldn’t find Allifranchini in the violin section.  So we concluded something definitely happened.  This Friday’s concert, however, had he and Frautschi playing together a piece by Schnittke.  To add to the puzzlement, who walked out as the concertmaster?  Allifranchini, of course.

Members of the MMFO as listed in tonight's Playbill.  Allifranchini's name was nowhere to be found.  But look at the first photo in this blog entry, who was in the concertmaster's seat?

Driving up was not a problem, and we found free parking of 65^th.  Dinner was takeout from Great Wall.  We got home at around 10:20 pm.

Budapest Festival Orchestra – Ivan Fischer, conductor; Jeanine De Bique, soprano. August 4, 2019.

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra (Seat M13, $52.50).

Program

Symphony No. 88 in G major (1787) by Haydn (1732-1809).

Arias by Handel (1685-1759).

Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”) (1788) by Mozart (1756-1791).

Handel Arias

Disserratevi, o porte d’Averno, from La ressurezione (1708).

Ritorna, oh caro e dolce mio Tesoro from Rodelinda (1725).

Da tempeste il legno infranto, from Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1724).

This is considered one of the events in the Mostly Mozart Festival.  One may question why the Budapest Festival Orchestra would have a role in it, but at least it had one of Mozart’s best-known works in it.

The Program Notes describes the Haydn symphony as one of his best known.  Hadyn wrote over 100 symphonies, I doubt this is in his top 20.  Over the years I must have heard quite a few of Haydn’s symphonies, and I don’t recall ever hearing this one, neither could I find any entry in this blog.  Another “giveaway” is that if this is indeed a popular symphony someone would have given it a name or nickname already.  (This last point probably is somewhat controversial.)

On the other hand, it is noteworthy that Haydn didn’t write this on a commission from some nobility, and that the orchestra he wrote for had some virtuoso musicians.  The piece sounded complex enough, but I must say it wasn’t a memorable experience in that I have forgotten it, after one day.  The four movements are Adagio-Allegro, Largo, Menuet: Trio, and Finale: Allegro con spirito.

Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony is a delightful composition that showed Mozart’s genius without sounding too difficult.  Perhaps the best-known part is how at the end of the fourth movement Mozart wove together 5 or 6 melodies which (according to the Program Notes) “cannot readily be comprehended by the listener, only recognized as something transcendent and awe-inspiring.”

It was a disappointment, especially against my expectations of this orchestra.  Muddled is the word that came to mind the most.  Fischer brought out a lot of dynamics from the orchestra, but with no particular story to tell.  I like to think I have “broken the code” on the 5-melody fugue, and it was not done well at all.  Instead of clean, parallel lines, what I heard was one line overwhelming the other, which eventually descended into chaos (well, a bit of exaggeration here.)

Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra at the conclusion of the concert.

The highlight of this otherwise mediocre concert was the young Trinidadian soprano De Bique.  She thrilled the audience with the three Handel arias she sang.  I am not a singer, so I can’t describe the vocal techniques she brought to bear to make her high notes exquisite, fast runs clean, and diction clear.  I sensed a bit of nervousness at the beginning, but she just “let it rip” when she realized how appreciative the audience was.

Jeanine De Bique has a delightful voice and an engaging stage presence.

While De Bique certainly has the technique and personality to go far in her singing career, there is still some ways to go, in my opinion.  All three songs sounded like vocal exercises.  The titles of the three songs, translated into English, are (i) Unlock yourselves, o gates of Hell! (ii) Return, oh my dear, sweet treasure. (iii) A storm-battered vessel.  One can imagine the emotions are very different in the three songs, but she could have done them in any order and I wouldn’t have known.  That’s not helped by my inability to follow her words along in the program.  My Italian is rudimentary, but not so bad that I couldn’t even catch a sentence here or there?

It is not surprising that the Orchestra comprised mostly of Caucasians, what is surprising was the concertmaster, Yoonshin Song, is a Korean woman.  A search of the internet indicates that she has just been named Houston Symphony’s concertmaster (vacated by Frank Huang three years ago), and was with Detroit Symphony from 2012.  Which makes it more intriguing: who is the regular BFO concertmaster?

The day after I bought the tickets to event Anne found out she would have a conflict, so I went by myself.  The train schedule was such that I had more than an hour between arrival at Penn Station and the 5 pm start of the concert.  I walked up quite a sweat, even though I did it slowly. 

Overall it was still a good experience.

Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra – Gianandrea Noseda, conductor; Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano. August 2, 2019.

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra (Seat S112, $52.50).

Pre-Concert Recital – programmed announced from the stage

Selected Dances by Schubert (D.365, D.179, D.146, D.145, D.734. D790).

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano.

Program

Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major (1804-06) by Beethoven (1770-1827).

Symphony No. 9 in C major (“Great”) (c. 1825-28) by Schubert (1797-1828).

It would be difficult to associate either of the two pieces on tonight’s program with Mozart, which may or may not be disappointing.  However, both pieces should be interesting, at least on paper.

No doubt the Beethoven piece was inspiring, especially as performed tonight by Aimard.  I had seen him on a couple of occasions and liked his playing.  At the risk of sounding a bit hyperbolic, tonight Aimard made the concerto sound as “heroic” as the Emperor concerto.  The notes were clear, the lines superb; an overall coherent and imaginative telling of a story.  Undoubtedly one of the best performances of this work.

Aimard also did the pre-concert recital.  If I understood him correctly, he talked about this contrast between the romanticism of Beethoven and the lyricism of Schubert, and that people usually fall into one camp or another.  (Not I, since I didn’t even realize there were camps to fall into.)  Tonight’s program would be a nice contrast between the two composers.  For the recital he chose 20 or so of Schubert’s dances to illustrate Schubert’s lyricism; and, to allay the audience’s fear it would be interminably long, he reassured us the pieces averaged a minute each.  It was a delightful collection that are within reach of many pianists.  Aimard had this interesting gesture of seeming to be chewing on something as he played.

Noseda holding hands of Frautschi and Aimard after the Beethoven concerto.

The moniker for Schubert’s Ninth Symphony was “Great” to distinguish it from the “Little” Symphony (No. 6, also in C major).  Nowadays many take it to reference the majesty of the symphony.  At 58 minutes (per Program Notes), and the way the MMFO played it, I would call it “Long.”  It was just a disappointment, and certainly didn’t live up to the lyricism that Aimard referred to during his Pre-Concert chat.

Noseda, who was quite animated in his conducting, managed to draw out a lot of contrast from the orchestra.  However, the orchestra sounded – and often looked – disorganized, and muddled through many of the fast passages.  The one surprise for me was how fast the second movement was: I thought it was a scherzo initially.  The four movements are: (i) Andante – Allegro ma non troppo – Piu moto; (ii) Andante con moto; (iii) Scherzo: Allegro vivace – Trio; and (iv) Finale: Allegro vivace.

More observation on personnel changes.  Frautschi was again the concertmaster.  We saw the one listed in the program (Ruggero Allifranchini) sitting in the last seat of the first violins, and concluded he didn’t lead the orchestra during the first two concerts.  Also, the regular second flutist was replaced by a gentleman.  While the latter change can be attributed to scheduling reasons, I do wonder why Allifranchini moved from first to last.  He seemed cheerful enough in his new position, though.

Noseda acknowledging different sections of the orchestra after the Schubert Symphony.  One can see the listed concertmaster seated in the first violin section.

There was this gentleman who was enthusiastically applauding Aimard after the Beethoven concert, and then we discovered it was Kam L from church.  We chatted a bit during intermission.

Today was the last day of VBS, our children stayed with us during the week to attend.  We took them back to Hoboken.  Getting to Lincoln Center (by bus and subway) was easy enough.  On our way back we got something to eat in Hoboken before driving our car back to South Amboy.

Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra – Louis Langree, conductor; Martin Helmchen, piano. July 30, 2019.

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra (Seat U5, $52.50).

Pre-Concert Recital

Fantasia in D minor, K. 397 (1782) by Mozart.

Traumerei, Op. 15, No. 7 (1838) by Robert Schumann.

Nocturne in F major, Op. 6, No. 2 (1836) by Clara Schumann.

Intermezzo in A minor, Op. 118, No. 1; Romanze in F major, No. 5 (1893) by Brahms.

Ko-Eun Yi, piano.

Program

Overture to Don Giovanni (1787) by Mozart.

Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K.466 (1785) by Mozart.

Symphony No. 3 in F major (1883) by Brahms.

This was our third Mostly Mozart concert, and our first encounter with Mozart.  It won’t surprise me if they change the name of this festival in the near future.

Let us first dispense with the pre-concert.  A different pianist and a different program were on tap.  Mozart’s Fantasia was nice, but I was hoping for something a bit more substantial in our first encounter with the composer for which the festival is named.

The other surprise was between Robert and Clara Schumann, the wife’s composition was the more virtuoso one.  During the last several years we have encountered more of Clara Schumann’s music (perhaps a herd mentality at work here?), and tonight’s piece was more substantial than ever.

The program concluded with two movements from Brahms’s Op. 118.  It probably takes someone who appreciates piano playing a lot more than I to tell what kind of a pianist Yi is; she did handle the more difficult pieces with ease.  Compared to other pre-concert recitals, this wasn’t a particularly memorable experience.

Ko-Eun Yi is a Korean pianist trained in the United States.

The first surprise in the main concert was that the usual concertmaster was sitting in the assistant’s seat, and Laura Frautschi, the former (?) second violin principal, led the orchestra for the evening.  We noticed last week the concertmaster (still listed as such in the program) had lost a lot of weight; not sure whether that had anything to do with the new arrangement.  To add to my confusion, last week the second violin section was all-women, tonight there were several men in it.

The second surprise was that Langree spent a few minutes to talk about the program, particularly how the three pieces belonged together.  He mentioned Mozart was the first “freelance” composer in that he didn’t work for any royal court, and that Brahms’s symphony starts with a statement “free but happy.”  Mozart wrote the piano concerto and Don Giovanni at about the same time (although for Mozart two years was a long time), and there are “quotes” of one in the other (my take).  What I didn’t know was that Brahms had a lot to do with popularizing Mozart, and that he encouraged Clara Schumann to add Mozart to her repertoire.  Also, Brahms’s third symphony was “infused with the spirit of Mozart” in its compactness, structure, and intimacy (also quoting from the Program Notes).

We saw Don Giovanni during our European trip in May, so the overture sounded quite familiar.  What I didn’t hear was the dramatic ending of the opera when Don Giovanni was dragged off to hell: it was supposed to be there at the very beginning.

This was our second encounter with Helmchen, who performed another Mozart concerto two years ago.  Tonight’s piece wasn’t Mozart’s most popular, so it brought with it a certain degree of freshness.  One could indeed argue it contains some of the dark ideas Mozart used in Don Giovanni.  Overall I enjoyed it: Helmchen’s playing had a lot to do with it.  The cadenzas were written by Clara Schumann.  She was born 200 years ago.

Helmchen and Langree after the Mozart concerto.

In both the overture and the concerto, the orchestra didn’t sound as crisp as I thought Mozart should be.

A rather large ensemble was used for the Brahms symphony: 10 first violins and 5 French horns.  Here the orchestra did a good job, and the different sections sounded great when they had the solo parts.  Musicologists can debate whether Mozart or Beethoven had more influence on Brahms – and I suppose one can make either/both cases – this was simply nice music to listen to.  Some make a great deal out of the beginning three notes (F-A flat-F) as Brahms’s statement of “free but happy,” they are not the most memorable of the different tunes heard in the symphony.

For Mostly Mozart this is a very large orchestra.

We again drove into the city and had street food.  We stopped by the new Turnpike rest area near Exit 11 on our way home, but ended up not eating there as the line was long.