“Bogotá is Mozart” trumpet the banners around the Colombian capital. With 63 concerts in just four days, it’s doing that bold claim justice. The city’s own Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá had the honour of officially opening the festival, bringing a packed – possibly too packed – programme to the Teatro Mayor. The Filarmónica, founded in 1967, gave spirited performances to kick things off, with some stylish solo contributions.
The Overture to Mozart’s opera Idomeneo demonstrated both the orchestra’s strengths and its weaknesses: a lovely sweet violin tone was very much to the fore, but the string ensemble wasn’t always tightly underpinned by cellos and basses. Francesco Belli isn’t the most demonstrative of conductors and dramatic impetus was occasionally lacking; soft timpani sticks didn’t entirely help matters.
The playing settled as the Filarmónica was joined by Jasminka Stancul, of the Vienna Brahms Trio, for the Piano Concerto no. 23 in A major. Composed during the winter of 1785-86, it was completed at about the same time as Figaro and premiered to great acclaim in the spring. Despite this, the concerto wasn't well known in Mozart’s lifetime, the composer explaining that it was a work that “I keep for myself or for a small circle of music-lovers and connoisseurs (who promise not to let it out of their hands).”
Stancul’s playing was well mannered, politely exchanging ideas with the orchestra in the Allegro first movement. This was one of the few piano concertos for which Mozart wrote down his cadenzas for posterity; Stancul demonstrated virtuosic flourishes before the orchestra re-entered and the movement gently wound down to a close. The Adagio is a slow siciliano, introduced by the pianist alone, eventually with a gently rocking accompaniment. Stancul played with a fine sense of cantabile before taking on a more urgent attack for the genial Allegro assai finale, Mozart’s genial wit at its finest.