All-Mozart set played ‘con spirito’
Most concert offerings from the New Century Chamber Orchestra are strings-only affairs, since that’s the ensemble’s core mission and identity. But to really get into the world of Mozart, you have to invite the woodwinds and even a little brass to the party.
So the all-Mozart program that the orchestra gave in Berkeley’s First Congregational Church on Thursday, Jan. 25, sounded even more full-bodied and richly hued than usual. The smoky sounds of the clarinet — still something of a novelty when it started making occasional appearances in the composer’s work around 1780 — added pungency to the sonorities in one piece, and having flutes, oboes, bassoons and horns on hand lent the entire evening a welcome sonic punch.
Yet it wasn’t until after intermission, with a formidable and dramatically canny account of Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 in A, K. 201, that the orchestra made full use of all these new resources. That was when violinist Daniel Hope, who has taken over the group’s artistic leadership this season with the title artistic partner, not only unleashed the
textural weight of the ensemble but helped rein it in as well.
Everything about this performance gave evidence of judicious attention to detail, and to the musicians’ determination to build those details into a persuasive whole. The opening movement, with its slippery main theme constructed atop vertiginous octave drops, gradually insinuated its way into full splendor, but always with just enough juice held in reserve for the big moments.
The minuet sounded engagingly rambunctious, and the horns chimed in delightfully at the end of each verse with their comical postludes as if to say, “yeah, that’s what I think too.” Most thrilling of all — indeed the high point of the evening — was the finale, which took Mozart’s notation “con spirito” as straightforward instruction and ran with it, in a performance of ferocious energy. The only thing that would have improved it would have been to observe the repeats.
The evening’s first half was devoted, with more variable success, to a pair of concertos. For the Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488, Sebastian Knauer made a stolid and overemphatic soloist, casting most of the concerto — with the exception of some delicately etched passages in the slow movement — in shades of loud and louder. (On Saturday, Jan. 27, Mozart’s birthday, the soloist’s spot will be given over to the great Menahem Pressler, still chugging along tirelessly at 94.)
Hope gave a more probing, cleanly delineated rendition of the Violin Concerto No. 3, K. 216, bringing out all the music’s youthful ebullience and puckish charm. There was a faint air of inconsequentiality about it all — there’s always a bit of heavy lifting involved in making Mozart’s violin concertos fill the space allotted to them, and Hope seemed content to let the music skate by. But there was no denying the elegance or vitality of his reading.
New Century Chamber Orchestra: 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 27, Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 28, Osher Marin JCC, 200 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. $29-$61. (415) 392-4400, www.ncco.org