Orchestra's maestro-less Mozart

The Philadelphia Orchestra's financial troubles may be galling, but adversity can inspire innovation. The Orchestra entered the new year by experimenting with historical performance practice and eliminating the cost of a conductor.

Concertmaster David Kim led Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Mozart's 25th Symphony from his seat at the head of the first violin section. Guest soloist Imogen Cooper led Mozart's 24th piano concerto from the piano.

Conductorless concerts were actually the standard practice in the Baroque period as well as in Mozart's heyday in the late 18th Century. Concerts were normally led by the concertmaster. Musician-composers like Bach and Mozart often conducted their own compositions from the keyboard.

Chamber orchestras and period instrument groups regularly play without a conductor nowadays. Ignat Solzhenitsyn frequently conducted Mozart's piano concertos from the keyboard when he directed the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia (2004-10).

A dull composer?

Mozart's orchestral music creates problems for the modern symphony orchestra. He composed it for the smaller orchestras we now classify as chamber orchestras, playing in halls comparable to the Perelman Theater or the churches used by many Philadelphia musical organizations. When played by big modern orchestras, in large halls, Mozart's balanced 18th-Century finesse loses some of its clarity and vigor. It can sound limp and over-mannered to ears accustomed to the massive emotional outpourings of composers like Tchaikovsky and Beethoven.

In fact, some people I know consider Mozart a dull composer because they've only heard big-orchestra performances. They're usually happily surprised when they hear a chamber orchestra performance and discover just how lively he really is.

For last weekend's performance, the Philadelphia Orchestra trimmed down to chamber orchestra size— some 30 musicians— but Kim & Co. still had to contend with the size of Verizon Hall. They got around that by picking three pieces from the more robust areas of Mozart's output.

Looser approach

The bouncy, energetic opening of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik has grabbed audiences for two centuries. The 25th Symphony and the 24th Piano Concerto begin and end with strong dramatic statements.

The absence of a conductor had no effect on the basic requirements of a good performance. The musicians stayed together and maintained a unified, coherent vision of the composer's intentions.

The primary gain was a general looseness. The Orchestra's various sections interacted with each other much as individual musicians interact in chamber music performances.

Like dinner guests

Music historians refer to the Mozart-Haydn era as the Classical Period— a time when music emphasized form and balance. To get the most out of that kind of music, the musicians must perform like guests at a formal dinner party. If they can relax inside their tails and boiled shirts, everyone can have a good time. If they feel constrained, the event turns into a well mannered bore.

Some conductors can lead Mozart performances without stifling the musicians. But it's easier to achieve that looseness when the crew isn't laboring under the eyes of an overseer.

The 25th Symphony contributed the one weak point in the program. Mozart began writing symphonies at an age when most children are still learning the three R's. Musicologists and music directors generally agree that his first two dozen are mostly interesting because Mozart wrote them.

Moving simplicity

The 25th, by contrast, is the earliest Mozart symphony regularly performed today. Its outer movements are forceful and dramatic, but the adagio and the minuet rank among his less inspired creations.

For the 24th Piano Concerto, the musicians engaged in a true collaboration with a soloist who could fall into the spirit of the evening. Imogen Cooper can pound when required (within the appropriate limits), but she can also capture the moving simplicity of Mozart's slower and quieter moments.

Opportunity to shine

Some of the same musicians joined Cooper in Perelman Theater Sunday afternoon for an all-Mozart chamber music session that featured a youthful fantasy for solo piano, the Quintet for Piano and Winds, and the String Quintet in D Major, which Mozart wrote a year before his premature death.

Of the three pieces Cooper played during the two concerts, my personal favorite was the Quintet for Piano and Winds. It's a brilliant piece that exploits the special qualities of all five instruments and constantly experiments with new combinations of tone colors. Mozart gave all five players a chance to shine, and all five took advantage of it.

The wind quintet and the string quintet exemplified one of the major attractions of the Orchestra chamber music concerts: These programs can draw on first-class performers from every section of the Orchestra. The Philadelphia Orchestra is the only organization in Greater Philadelphia that could team four top-level wind players with a star-level pianist and follow them with a masterwork that featured five equally talented string players.♦


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