Posted on Wed, Jan. 14, 2009
Though the classical music world has long lamented what might have been had Wolfgang Mozart lived beyond age 35, it doesn't often look closely at what really was - at least prior to the decade that produced his oft-heard masterpieces. And there are knowledgeable people who claim that early Mozart is best. I wouldn't go that far, but I was happy to see the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia delving into earlier symphonies and concerts (written from ages 16 to 21) Monday at the Kimmel Center, though that happiness didn't exactly survive the performances.
Unlike music director Ignat Solzhenitsyn's periodic performances of Mendelssohn's early string symphonies - all moderately engaging - the only performances Monday that went to the heart of music were those involving guest violinist Korbinian Altenberger, an in-demand young German artist who, thanks to Philadelphia's Astral Artists program, has been and will be much in evidence here.
In the
Violin Concerto No. 5 ("Turkish"), Altenberger appeared to have organized his always-original, frequently revelatory approach around the piece's cadenzas, whether long or brief. But while cadenzas are usually approached from the standpoint of showing what the violinist can do with his instrument, Altenberger was more about showing all that he felt with this music. Those feelings were deep and expansive. His initial entrance in the first movement not only felt like a soliloquy perfectly suited to the notes at hand but, formally speaking, it also created something of a slow introduction to the livelier music that followed. Its flow could easily have been obstructed, but wasn't.
Also, the character of the piece was remarkably consistent. Altenberger tends to attack notes softly, producing a note of consistent volume and purity of sound. This manner was memorably established early on during his more ruminative moments. Applied to more animated passages, this articulation seemed to be a different side of the same coin. In short, it worked.
He couldn't have done it without Solzhenitsyn's sympathies as a collaborator. But left to his own devices, the conductor's antisentimental, somewhat unyielding approach - which works well in Mozart's contrapuntal later works - seemed out of place. Early Mozart comes out of a more rococo world, whose sensibility doesn't always hold up today, and thus needs coaxing and massaging to show what's really there. Under Solzhenitsyn's interpretive X-ray, the
Symphony No. 17, for example, didn't reveal much at all.
The three-movement work was played with the orchestra digging into the strings as if they were playing Beethoven, subverting any potential charm. Solzhenitsyn plays "andante" faster than most conductors, no doubt with sound reasoning, but the results here felt like three movements too similar in character to be in the same 18th-century symphony.
The
Symphony No. 29 reveals plenty under Solzhenitsyn's steely gaze - its content is stronger, its four movements more undeniably varied. But that doesn't mean this music responds to the kind of square-cut phrasing that works in Bach. And with so little surface charm, the lapses in the performance were more obvious, like flabby passagework and uncertainty among the wind instruments.
Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.
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