Orchestra proves it can’t go wrong with the classics

There’s nothing like an allMozart concert to bring you in touch with the soft underbelly of your own humanity.

That’s the kind of truth that the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, with music director Rossen Milanov and piano soloist Shai Wosner, laid bare Friday night at the Southern Theatre in a program of some of Mozart’s most inspired creations.

The opening of the overture to the opera “Don Giovanni” came across with menacing intensity and gravitas. What the orchestra lacked in the clarity of the rhythmic syncopations it gained in the richness of the overall sound.

After the slow introduction, there was no dearth of clarity in the Allegro section, which also overflowed with cheerfulness.

Pianist Wosner is an artist who, like all the finest, embodies equal parts head and heart. His opening solo episode in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 467 was a sparkling display of flawless technique that shimmered with the nuance of moonlight on a rippling lake.

Wosner’s approach to the first movement’s development section was less emotive than some, but it brimmed with fluid shadings in dynamics and color, all the while striding along with purpose. His cadenza was a technical and dramatic tour de force, with striking dynamic shifts, fun harmonic turns and even a quote from one of Mozart’s opera arias.

The concerto’s second movement Andante was beautifully shaped and paced, with an airy tempo that Milanov kept moving along. Together, he, Wosner and the orchestra drifted through Mozart’s extraordinary melodies and harmonies to an ending that, however, seemed a bit abrupt.

Wosner made all of Mozart’s fiendish pyrotechnics in the concerto’s finale seem like just so much high-class noodling around. At every turn, Milanov and the orchestra fit Wosner’s breakneck pacing like a glove. The performance earned a standing ovation, and Wosner offered an achingly intimate interpretation of some Schubert as an encore.

The slow introduction of Mozart’s Symphony No. 39, one of his finest, lost warmth of sound in the violins at a few moments before a buoyant tone took over in the Allegro section. Milanov and the orchestra turned the second movement, Andante con moto, into a landscape of sunlight and clouds, colorful wind solos and rich string sound.

The third movement “Minuetto” became a rustic dance, which led to a storm of joy and delight in the Allegro finale. The concert’s second encore, the first movement of “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” also brought the evening’s second standing ovation.

As one concert-goer said on the way out of the theater, you can’t go wrong with Mozart.