There is nothing quite like Mozart to light a dark December evening, and music by Mozart provided the framework for an engaging concert of juxtaposed styles as the Hartford Symphony Orchestra continued its 2016-2017 Masterworks Series in the Belding Theater, at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts.
The Friday night concert — the first of the weekend’s “Merry Mozart” performances — began with the Overture to “Don Giovanni” by Mozart. Music Director and Conductor Carolyn Kuan created an atmospheric start with the introduction using sharply articulated syncopated rhythms in the accompaniment. The main part of the overture itself was classical and filled with detail.
Two works followed before the intermission, both based on styles that found their way from popular music into classical music, and both caused us to hear the eclectic influences that come together in the music of Mozart in a different way.
It was a homecoming for violinist Sirena Huang who returned to Hartford as soloist in the Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20 (often called the “Gypsy Airs”) by Pablo de Sarasate. Huang has played with the HSO on several earlier occasions. We were privileged to hear this amazing, locally raised musical personality season-by-season early in her career.
She has continued to grow as a musician and blazed through the Sarasate. She played with attitude and emphasized the bluesy notes in this showcase for violin. She shifted her sound for the concluding Allegro molto vivace to create a thrilling and precise close at blazing speed. It was a stunning performance. Hartford says: More please! Bring her back soon!
Huang also joined composer and guitarist Steven Mackey for his virtuosic four-movement work called “Four Iconoclastic Episodes.” The “Episodes” were first performed in 2006 and are scored for solo electric guitar, solo violin, and string orchestra. Mackey helped us place the primary influences on this work, which came from progressive guitar players like John McLaughlin, bands like Radiohead, and from Hendrix energy. The sound of the electric guitar created satisfying textures, but the real pleasure in the work came from its fractured and pulsing rhythms and a logical and clever deep-scale musical structure. The solo writing for both guitar and violin was extremely vibrant, but there was so much “everything” that it would have been refreshing to have more spaces, more windows to hear the orchestral string writing. But the piece was memorable and played with amazing ensemble.
After intermission, members of the orchestra selected three audience members from a raffle to receive gifts and the orchestra played a sonic gift, which was the “Overture miniature” from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite.”
The evening closed with the Symphony No. 41 by Mozart, nicknamed the “Jupiter Symphony.” This final symphony by Mozart is built from contrasts and complexities. Kuan explained to the audience at the pre-concert lecture that she finds the Mozart style consumes large amounts of time because the music is only marked sparingly. One needs to decide how to land every phrase and where to move the dynamics, which are only indicated as starting points in the score.
She succeeded.
You know you are hearing Mozart performed well when every detail seems plugged in to something that comes before and after. It all lights up. Kuan took all three sonata-movement repeats and this allowed us to better understand the development that took place almost continually afterward. The extended proportions created by the repeats were sustained by the orchestra with terrific balances and intelligent playing. The audience was with every move.
On a dark December evening, this was Mozart lit from within.
THE HSO MASTERWORKS SERIES “MERRY MOZART” continues at 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 10, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 11, in the Belding Theater at The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford. Tickets start at $10 for students, $25 for patrons 40 and under, then $38 and up; 860-987-5900 and hartfordsymphony.org
Editor’s Note: this story has been updated to correct the year of the Masterworks Series as the 2016-2017 series.
