ALL MOZART AT THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC JUNE 3-6
Guest Conductor Jeffrey Kahane conducts from the keyboard and (below) from the podium at NewYork Philharmonic's All Mozart program
Photos: NY Times
Jeffrey Kahane brings light
and inspiration to NY Phil’s Mostly Mozart
Reviewed by Dwight Casimere
NEW YORK—California native Jeffrey Kahane brought a solid
measure of his home state’s celebrated sunlight to his performance of the New
York Philharmonic’s final subscription concert of the season at Avery Fisher Hall, an All
Mozart program of the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 21, Symphony No. 38, Prague
and Piano Concerto No. 20. The Philharmonic begins its popular summertime
Concerts in the Parks, starting with
Central Park Wednesday, June 17.
Symphony No. 38, the
“Prague,” is arguably one of Mozart’s most popular. It is certainly the one
with the most recognizable “tunes” which fans of the composer will also
recognize in the operas “Don Giovanni” and “The Marriage of Figaro.” Esteemed
conductor and musicologist Kahane let none of the work’s familiarity prevent
him from imbuing it with a freshness and vitality that place Mozart’s
cornucopia of musical ideas like a newly faceted diamond atop a finely crafted
setting provided by the slimmed down version of the New York Philharmonic, in
full Classical period mode, with some instrumentalists, trumpeters in
particular, playing period instruments.
Mozart’s life and work is
most often associated with the musical capitol of Vienna, but, it is in Prague
where he achieved his greatest celebrity. Where, for example, Vienna met his forays into opera with polite
skepticism, Prague rolled out the Red Carpet and met him with a hero’s welcome.
Symphony No. 38 is a virtual love note
written for and bestowed upon the city of Prague in a series of performances
there in 1787 of the newly completed work.
Kahane and company quickly
showed why this is one of Mozart’s most indelible works. Using his supple hands
like a sculptor’s to mold and shape the dynamic shift in tempo from the slow
introduction to the opening Allegro movement, to later reveal its arching
themes that seemed to reach into a future-world of chromatically dissonant
themes. Trained ears will also recognize the same themes in Mozart’s later operas,
Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro, which he would premiere in Prague. (Mozart is said to have
been writing a movement for the Prague symphony at the same time that he was
working on Figaro.) In many ways, the city had become his esthetic home and
musical laboratory with his shingle hung out for all to see: ‘Genius at Work.’
Kahane opened and closed the
program with Mozart’s Piano Concerto’s No. 21 in C Major and No. 20 in D minor,
in which he, like the composer, acted as both conductor and solo pianist.
Mozart was fast becoming
recognized as a virtuoso pianist and had begun composing concert platforms for
himself in rapid succession during the years 1782-1786.
His musical trajectory would propel him to the very center of Viennese concert
life and prompted his friend and mentor, the esteemed Franz Joseph Haydn to personally declare , in
a letter to the composer’s father, Leopold, the words, “I tell you before God,
as an honest man, that your son is the greatest composer I know.”
Kahane played and conducted
brilliantly in both of the piano concertos, lending his own cadenza to the
concluding Piano Concerto No. 20 and also performing the rapid-fire succession of
notes in the cadenzas composed by Beethoven for the final movement. Kahane’s playing of the flurry of notes was
crystalline.
His further judicious use of
the pedal may have reflected Mozart’s own notations on the work, which may have
referenced his playing on the Pedal Piano, which Mozart had constructed for him
by a Viennese instrument builder.
Kahane occasionally arose
from his piano to urge the orchestra forward in the restless passages that set
the keyboard parts in bas relief against the exceptional playing of the ensemble,
in particular the ringing declarations from the trumpets and the firm resonance
of the timpani. It was one of the most
musically satisfying concerts of the year and a fitting finale to the
subscription season.
New York Philharmonic
Concerts in the Parks begin in Central Park Wednesday, June 17
and Thursday, June 18 with
Music Director Alan Gilbert at the podium.
