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First Metropolitan United Church
April 18, 2009
The Sinfonia Concertante, K.364, of 1779, is Mozart's only major example of an "ensemble concerto". The two-piano concerto, the The New Grove puts it, is a work "of vivacity and charm" but not a major work. (There is also a complete, although disputed, work for winds and Mozart is known to have begun concertos for violin and piano, and for string trio.)
Perhaps underlining the significance of K.364 is the fact that it is Mozart's last concerto for stringed instruments; it is also the last concerto he wrote in Salzburg: after his arrival in Vienna he concentrated (with the notable exceptions of the four horn concertos and the one for clarinet) on his own instrument, the piano.
Saturday night's final concert of the season from the Victoria Chamber Orchestra featured a superb performance of the Sinfonia Concertante from Louis Sherman Concerto Competition winners Nelson Moneo and Jessica Pickersgill.
It is not that often that we hear this work from two soloists who regularly play together (Moneo and Pickersgill are members of the Divertenté Quartet) and the communication and unanimity of phrasing of the pair was one of the things which set this performance apart.
While both players were impressive individually, the defining moments were when they played together; and the cadenzas in the first and second movements, for me, stood above the rest. These are not cadenzas intended to stun the audience with the players' virtuosity, nor did they try to. But the way in which the pair played almost as one had the entire audience rapt. Magical.
Yariv Aloni and his players provided sterling support, from the elegant and poised opening tutti to the crisp final presto. Ensemble and intonation were excellent and Aloni's close attention to his soloists' rubato irreproachable.
B flat is not a key which seemed to have appealed to the great symphonists after Haydn (a dozen of his 108 are in the key, including two of the "London" symphonies). In fact, off the top of the head, a mere handful occur: Beethoven's Fourth, Schumann's First and three Fifths: those of Bruckner, Prokofiev - and Schubert. (Compare this with the number of symphonies in, say, C or D minor.)
Saturday's concert closed with a delectable performance of this last, perhaps the most Viennese of all symphonies, the very embodiment of gemütlichkeit.
Tempos were well-chosen, balances very good and I was most impressed, as I was throughout the evening, with the firm bass line.
While the Victoria Chamber Orchestra is usually comprised solely of strings, this evening required additional forces consisting, for the Schubert, of flute and a pair each of oboes, bassoons and horns. They added a delicious extra dimension to the sound.
Clearly the opening work of the evening, Mozart's Symphony No.1, K.16 (written when he was just eight years old) is no masterpiece and it would be a mistake to play it as such.
There were no such faux pas here, simply a very-well played and directed performance of a remarkable work by a prodigiously-talented child. Aloni and his orchestra made neither apology for the work's occasional shortcomings, nor did they try to adduce more to the music than it can bear. An object lesson, in fact, in early Mozart playing.
The Victoria Chamber Orchestra proceed from strength to strength.
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