Verdi and Wagner may be turning 200 in 2013, but certainly that doesn’t make their music any more or less worth celebrating than it was last year, or will be in five years’ time. So why not mix things up and mark a prime number here and there? In honor of a certain upcoming 257th birthday, Jaap van Zweden led the Dallas Symphony Orchestra this weekend in the first of two programs comprising the DSO’s Mozart Festival. After the curtain-raising overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio, violinist Augustin Hadelich performed the Violin Concerto no. 5 in A major, and the second half of the program featured two symphonies: Symphony no. 1 in E flat major and Symphony no. 41 in C major, “Jupiter”.
This program was billed as presenting works on the lighter side of Mozart (though not in terms of substance), with dark, stormy works like the Piano Concerto in C minor, K. 491 and the Symphony no. 40 in G minor, K. 550 on the docket for next weekend. The communicative performances of Mr van Zweden, Mr Hadelich, and the DSO, combined with a smartly chosen program, made a strong case for a Mozart deeper than mere lyricism.
The first two works highlighted elements of exoticism in Mozart, with the persistent use of the triangle, cymbal, and bass drum in the overture, and an episode in the concerto’s finale which, although really more of a Western imitation of “gypsy” music, earned the piece the nickname “Turkish”. The concision and humor of the Abduction overture fit nicely with the lush writing of the concerto, demonstrating huge variety within a category presumed to be so definite as “sunny, orientalist Mozart”. The two symphonies, Mozart’s first and last, made a nice pair, too. No one would suggest the First Symphony is one of Mozart’s more enduring masterpieces – no matter how brilliant the prodigy, anything by an eight-year-old is bound to be juvenilia – but it was served well in this context.
Mr van Zweden paced each of the four works according to its scope and weight, playing up contrasts in the smaller pieces, lyricism and dialogue in the concerto, and the brilliant intensity of the Jupiter. The overture and First Symphony spoke by means of their projection of distinct moods; already by the mid-1760s Mozart seems to have grasped the Classical aesthetic with its one-dimensional, archetypal characters. This symphony’s fast–slow–fast scheme of three short movements mirrors the ABA form of the overture, almost as if each movement contained the musical seeds of an operatic role, to be fully fleshed out later. Mr van Zweden, like a proud parent eager to show off his young son’s latest accomplishments, seemed to make a real personal investment in his interpretation of the symphony; without building it up to more than it really is, he brought out from his players an energized reading, full of sensitive coloring and awed naïveté.
This weekend’s performance was Mr Hadelich’s Dallas Symphony debut, and he was enthusiastically received. His Mozart was full-bodied yet elegant, never a delicate artifact in a museum case but rather a scene, sung and danced by violin in dialogue with the orchestra. Mr Hadelich employed a healthy amount of vibrato and the occasional overly Romantic turn of phrase (particularly in the first-movement cadenza; all cadenzas this evening were his own, and were generally tasteful and imaginative), but his style on the whole was a good match for Mr van Zweden’s historically informed, virile brand of Mozart playing.
At a length equal to that of the program’s first half, and incomparably more mature than the First Symphony, the Symphony no. 41 was clearly the centerpiece of the evening. For all the bright, open, major-key Mozart thrown into this program, the Jupiter stands out in its white-hot radiance and its seriousness of purpose. Figaro and Leporello need not apply; this Mozart is straightforward, assertive, and deep. The DSO sounded stately and balanced, with Mr van Zweden eschewing some of the intricate detail he normally prefers, in favor of a broader view of the work. The Andante cantabile was particularly poised (read: slow) but wonderfully fluid, and the orchestra had enough gas left in the tank for a relentless fugato finale.
Mr Hadelich played a show-stopping rendition of Paganini’s Caprice no. 24 in A minor for an encore, the only music of another composer heard this evening. Virtuosic showpieces like this are always crowd-pleasing, yet the fact that Mr Hadelich’s tremendous performance still felt somehow unwelcome was a tribute to the rest of the evening, a moving portrait of a creative mind more nuanced and varied than we sometimes acknowledge.
