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Mozart’s late piano concertos are among his
greatest and subtlest creations, and consequently both immensely rewarding and,
by the same token, very challenging.
The ongoing recording project by Manchester
Camerata under its music director, Gábor Takács-Nagy, with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
as soloist, brought a fascinating concert at Chetham’s on Friday night. Word
had clearly got around: there was hardly a spare seat to be found.
Takács-Nagy and the orchestra, led by
Caroline Pether, got things off to a fizzing start with the Marriage of
Figaro overture – contemporary with the C minor concerto, K491 and no. 24, which
was to follow it. It was meant to be a fresh take on a familiar piece, said the
maestro, and so it proved. With 20 strings in total, the balance was bound to favour
clarity in the wind lines, and they emerged prominently, even from a big round
sound underpinned by modern timpani.
Big sound was a characteristic of Bavouzet’s
approach to the concerto, too, with plenty of pedal used on the Schimmel instrument
to underscore the music’s tragi-Romantic qualities. He knows how to be
self-effacing, too, and let the woodwind soloists have their fair share of the
limelight, but the piano has necessarily to claim much of it. He had a grand
and dramatic first movement cadenza to offer (by Hummel), which contributed to
the solemn and weighty effect.
The slow movement of K491 is a puzzle: such
a simple, seemingly childish, opening tune surely requires some decoration, but
how much? Bavouzet began very modestly, indeed making it seem a mere formality,
and though the ingenuity increased (and there was more in the finale), I wasn’t
quite convinced it was being used to heighten the emotional impact of the music
(as classical embellishment really should). The finale itself presents its
problems, and conductor and soloist must have decided it needed some drama to
finish, with a touch on the accelerator when the minor key signature returned.
The second half of the concert began with a
real curiosity: an overture for a play by Goethe (Erwin und Elmire)
written by Princess Anna Amalia von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach, a contemporary of
Mozart. Made-up name, I thought when I first saw it (we are near April Fools’
Day, after all), but apparently she did exist. Was it a bit cynical to dig up
her efforts under the ABO Trust’s programme to promote historical women
composers? The fact that her composition, a pleasant exercise in Empfindsamkeit,
survived probably only illustrates another inequality (of aristocrats versus
mere professional musicians) in her day. But at least – unlike Mozart – she
believed in the employment prospects of second flutes.
The other piano concerto was no. 25 in C
major, K503. It had all the virtues of the previous Bavouzet/Takács-Nagy major
key concerto interpretations – lightness of spirit, conversational interplay
between soloist and orchestra, well crafted contrasts and, in this case, a bit
of a tempo change in the first movement to energise proceedings. The big
cadenza (by the young American virtuoso Kenneth Broberg) was a real turn, involving
a near-quotation of La Marseillaise which encouraged many a chuckle
among its listeners.
In the lovely Andante slow movement Bavouzet
soon began to charm with some melodic embellishment, very tasteful again. The
finale was full of brilliance and romped home with a dizzying sprint of an
Allegretto.
