First Beethoven, now Mozart: Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes is considered one of classical music’s completists. However the place his so-called Beethoven Journey with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra may straightforwardly absorb all 5 of the composer’s piano concertos (performing them on the 2015 Proms and elsewhere to nice acclaim), Mozart’s 27 contributions to the style are much less simply marshalled right into a touring collection. Andsnes and the MCO’s Mozart Momentum venture focuses on works written in simply two years: 1785 and 1786. Approaching 30, the composer was a Viennese celeb and a newly sworn-in Freemason. This was a prolific interval – and, based on Andsnes, a watershed when Mozart achieved “a beforehand unheard stage of musical storytelling” in his piano concertos and past.
On the first two Mozart Momentum outings there was storytelling galore. The overture to the Marriage of Figaro (1786) launched the primary with an pressing whisper earlier than revealing a full-ensemble assault that might take your head off, the conductor-free MCO revelling in an acoustic that may – handled skilfully – work wonders with barely any sound. The Prague Symphony (1786) was additionally virtually outrageously partaking: the primary motion’s sudden counterpoint in pristine focus, the second all grace and silkiness, the finale a riot of exuberance that in some way averted tumbling over itself. Led with balletic poise by concertmaster Matthew Truscott, this was a showcase of the MCO because the Farrow & Ball of chamber orchestras: historic color subtly tailored for Twenty first-century sensibilities, served up in beautiful style.
Andsnes’s Steinway grand would have been as alien to Mozart as a 4x4 SUV, no matter his 18th-century-style route from the keyboard. However who cares, when the enjoying is that this compelling? Within the Piano Concerto No 20 (1785), Andsnes created time and area in passages boasting fistfuls of notes and appeared to spin his personal delicate pianissimo straight from the superb orchestral material. Piano Concerto No 24 (1786) was equally neat and natty, Andsnes’s proper hand all the time quicksilver, his contact impossibly even.
I used to be much less satisfied by the inclusion of three songs (not a kind for which Mozart is legendary and for good cause) within the second live performance, although it’s exhausting to think about them extra persuasively carried out than by copper-toned soprano Christiane Karg. The Masonic Funeral Music (1785) felt misplaced, too – a short, if fascinatingly textured musical filler. However nothing may in the end detract from the standard of chamber music-making: Andsnes and the MCO collaborating as inventive equals, talking with one voice.
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