Mostly Mozart Festival; Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, N.Y.; August 24, 2005
Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival continued with a varied, if not very surprising program on Wednesday night, when young Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard, fresh from his debut the week before, led a program of Mendelssohn, Mozart and Beethoven. Avery Fisher Hall’s new configuration, with the stage jutting into the hall more than 50 feet and with seats on both sides of and behind the players, seems to be working: there’s a fine sense of intimacy from half-way back and the entire effect is warm and inviting.
The Mendelssohn curtain-raiser was the “Hebrides” Overture, one of the most picturesque descriptions of grumbly Scottish weather in history. The looming clouds were heard from the first measures, understated but present, making the central storm all the more effective. Dausgaard, a graceful, expressive leader, clearly likes well-delineated dynamics, and the overture succeeded in every way.
Violinist Gil Shaham took center stage immediately after with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218. All of his violin concerti are youthful, composed when he was just 19, and they abound with perky melodies and surprising ideas. The first movement begins in a martial fashion, but the violin’s entrance – and remaining stance throughout the movement – is high above the rest of the orchestra, gleaming in bright tones and performing like a wildly virtuosic coloratura soprano. The second movement is not showy at all; it is, rather, a broad melody from the violin, occasionally given resonance by a solo oboe. The last movement starts as a dance (it is a rondeau and the dance comes and goes) but contains a middle section that has moments of true rusticity with an almost bagpipe-like drone. Mr Shaham’s performance began with a bit of brittleness in the highest registers, but we soon appreciated the contrast between that sharp-edge and the mellower sound he achieved in the middle and final movements. His playing was always accurate and elegant, and he shone particularly brightly in the cadenzas.
After the interval, Mr Dausgaard led the orchestra in a smooth reading of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, the “Pastorale.” He offered a picture of lovely rural life; even the fourth movement’s storm, while a fine interruption, refused to depict any malevolence in nature. Throughout, the orchestra’s winds were highlighted, and again, the soft passages were very soft and the loud passages excitingly forward. Mr Dausgaard allowed the work to unfold naturally, and each movement flowed, like nature at its most hill-and-dale-ish, gently into the next. It was a lovely evening.
Robert Levine
