Meandering Mozart with Gil Shaham and the Philadelphia Orchestra

The Fred J Cooper Memorial Organ in Verizon Hall, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, contains 46 visible external pipes. I know this because I counted them incessantly in an effort to stay awake during the Orchestra’s first subscription concert of 2024: a somnolent, conductor-less afternoon of Mozart. If I possessed better eyesight, I would have taken inventory of the stops and pedals too.

The program mirrored the concert experience that was common in Mozart’s own time. As narrator Charlotte Blake Alston told the audience in a series of perfunctory opening remarks, the concept of a conductor is still fairly modern. In the late 18th century, it often fell to the concertmaster to direct the orchestra when not performing solos. Mozart held that position for a time with the Salzburg Court Orchestra and, as a violin virtuoso, he used the two works that dominated the performance, the concertos K211 and K219, to show off his skill. Gil Shaham, a regular on the Philadelphia Orchestra roster, took up that role here.

Shaham clearly relished the job of player coach. He rarely beat time or cued specifically to the reduced corps onstage, composed mostly of strings with a smattering of oboes, horns and flutes. His gestures amid the extended solo lines of the two main pieces seemed more of encouragement than any specific direction. Perhaps that’s why the pieces sounded so shapeless, especially during the concert’s first half. The orchestra’s energy flagged in the long Allegro moderato movement of the D major concerto, and the Andante took on a ponderous shape. Shaham’s tone was refined but slightly tinny, and it was not distinctly different enough from David Kim, the actual concertmaster, with whom he often traded lines.

The forces brought more vigor to the Rondo in C major, K373, and a sense of elegance to the Adagio in E major, K261, an alternate slow movement for the K219 concerto. But building out a concert program around these bagatelles felt somewhat insubstantial, as though this were meant as an educational activity. And while it’s become somewhat unfashionable to play this music with a big, juicy sound, I would have welcomed a greater freedom of tempos, dynamic and vibrato – the kinds of tools that a lush, Romantic orchestra like Philadelphia has in its arsenal.

The situation improved marginally after intermission, when Shaham tore into the A major concerto with a greater sense of freedom and flexibility. He brought a showman’s energy to the cadenzas of the Allegro aperto and created an impish interplay with the strings in the Tempo di minuetto. But by that point, I still felt my mind drawn too often to the organ.