Continuing its survey of the music of Beethoven and Mozart, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra performed a program last night that was both familiar and challenging, in all of the right ways. Leading the orchestra was youthful-looking Jérémie Rhorer—a Paris native and former harpsichord player who made his Mostly Mozart Festival debut back in 2011, and has since gone on to conduct at the Vienna State Opera and Paris’ Opera Comique, where he leads his own period orchestra, Le Cercle de l’Harmonie.
After a crisp—if clinical—reading of the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro (which you can hear in its entirety next week with the Budapest Festival Orchestra), the orchestra was joined by British pianist Paul Lewis for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25, a repertory staple that’s all brillance and sunshine. Lewis dispatched it ably, though he seemed a bit out of his element; his performance seemed to lack the intellectual probing or emotional depth that can bring this otherwise conventional concerto to life.
I was surprised to see that a fair number of patrons from the nearly full Avery Fisher Hall had left at intermission. They missed out: Beethoven’s First Symphony, which closed the program, may at first seem like Beethoven-lite when compared to his other titanic symphonies. But, when you consider that Beethoven wrote it at the turn of the 18th century—only eight years after Mozart’s death—it sounds like a radical leap forward; its very first notes are strange and unsettling, sounding more like an ending than a start.
It took Rohrer a couple of movements to get going, but soon he had the orchestra flying. He took Beethoven at his word in the third-movement “Menuetto,” which is marked Allegro molto e vivace (“Very fast and energetic”), and carried the frenetic pace straight through the finale. I suppose there is such a thing as tension and release…
For those who might not have been completely wowed by Lewis’ performance in the Mozart concerto, it may have been because we know him better as one of the finest Schubert interpreters in the world. Just last year, Lewis performed Schubert’s final three piano sonatas in concert no fewer than 45 times. For a lucky few, then, redemption came in the form of Lewis’ late-night recital at the Kaplan Penthouse, just across 65th Street, where he gave one of the most moving performances I’ve ever heard of Schubert’s Sonata in A Major (D. 959).
Sitting less than 20 feet from the piano, you could literally feel Lewis’ struggle with this mountain of a sonata, in which Schubert literally depicts his own life-and-death struggle. After the performance, Lewis spoke to the audience, saying the last few bars “have a sense of reluctant acceptance, like saying goodbye to an old friend.”
As if he himself had a hard time saying goodbye, Lewis—who resembles a young Simon Rattle with his wild, curly hair—treated us to an encore of the slow movement from Schubert’s final B Flat Major Sonata (D. 960). Here, too, the mood was somber, but about halfway through, the key suddenly changed from minor to major, rising in unlikely triumph over unknown, unknowable adversities. Lewis, who played with just the right amount of emotion without ever being demonstrative, had the room mesmerized.
Pianists often spend a lifetime attempting to master these mysterious final sonatas of Franz Schubert; Lewis, at the age of 41, is already well on his way.
More pics on the photo page.