Shaham and Huang doing a fist bump at the end of the concert.
Program - All Mozart.
Violin Concerto No. 2 in D major, K. 211 (1775) by Mozart (1756-91).
Adagio in E major for Violin and Orchestra, K. 261 (1776).
Rondo in C major for Violin and Orchestra, K. 373 (1781).
Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219, Turkish (1775).
New York Philharmonic is offering two concerts each day on January 2 and 3, at reasonable prices. Anne and I attended this 2 pm concert with Gil Shaham as both the leader and the soloist, and I would then take in the 7:30 pm concert with Louis Langree conducting.
My initial thoughts was the two can be covered in one write-up, since the pieces were nearly all-Mozart. As I went through the concerts, different thoughts came to mind, so writing them up separately may make a bit more sense.
For a long time I was led to think all of Mozart's violin concertos were written when he was young (around 17), and thus lacked the maturity of his later compositions. The current thinking (as described in the Program Notes) is that Mozart indeed wrote his first violin concerto at age 17, but the 2nd through the 5th were written in 1775, thus belong to his mature period. (Most references have the mature period starting later than 1775, so perhaps his "more mature" period.) And the Annotator leaves open the possibility that the last two concertos were written even later. I wait with bated breath.
The two short pieces also have stories attached to them. One obvious question would be why Mozart would write these short pieces at all. Well, here are the explanations. Mozart fell out with his benefactor Prince-Archbishop Colloredo and Brunetti was asked to perform the Fifth concerto. The latter was not satisfied with the slow movement, so Mozart wrote another slow movement in the same key and tempo. Nowadays performers of the concerto usually use the "original" slow movement, and the new slow movement is a standalone piece cataloged as K. 261. The K. 373 piece was also composed for Brunetti, probably intended as part of another violin concerto that never got written. In all that, Mozart wasn't a fan of Brunetti, calling him "a disgrace to his master, to himself, and to the whole orchestra." Well, this is what I gleamed from the Program Notes anyway. All subject to change, I suppose, as more musicologists dig into this issue.
In any case, this was a delightful concert. The good thing about Mozart is one could simply sit there and let the music wash over you, or one can choose to analyze how the pieces are structured, and admire Mozart's genius in how things were put together. We were seated in the back of the main auditorium, and the acoustics worked just fine. Shaham didn't move around as much as I remembered him doing in prior concerts.
Quite a sizeable orchestra for a Mozart Violin Concerto. The balance was fine.
There were quite a few cadenzas in the program, some rather short. I wonder who wrote them: I don't recall any of these cadenzas when I was learning these concertos.
The concert's duration was about an hour. Just the right amount of Mozart in one sitting.
