Mozart: Violin Concertos 1-5 - No longer "paint by number"

2/7/11 – Mozart: Violin Concertos 1-5

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

– Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

            (NOTE – Once again, today’s posting is more of a reflection than a critical review of the pieces mentioned.  Still, I feel the character of the pieces is expressed here despite any level of detailed discussion on their finer points.)

I occasionally wonder how different my viewpoint on music of the Classical period and specifically Mozart would be different if my first experience with Mozart had been different.  As a piano student of 14 or so, I embarked learning the Mozart piano sonata – the one everybody knows, even if they don’t listen to Classical music; the one theorist point to as the benchmark of Sonata-Allegro form.  The Piano Sonata in C major, K. 545.  I knew the piece, I enjoyed the piece, but as I learned the piece, I became too flustered with the rigidity of playing it correctly.  I mean, I had no problem with the notes on the page – it was the rest of it that got to me.  The trills and ornamentation had to be just so.  The dynamics were as inflexible as the melodies.  I felt, as a performer, there was nothing I could do with this piece; I had no room for interpretation with tempi, the articulations, even the pedaling was dictated by “the rules” of classical period performance practice as they were described to me.  My adolescent pianist was immediately turned off.  Give me Brahms or Chopin instead.  I not only can play their music, I can play with their music.  I can put my stamp on a nocturne and make it mine.  That was totally out of the question here.  It was like I was being told to paint by numbers when I both wasn't very good at doing so, and wanted to paint outside the lines.

            Looking at Mozart today, I can see the beauty in the rigid performance practice standards.  I think in part that I’m capable of looking past them to the “why.”  A good performer of a classical piece, such as the violin concerti here, can take the rigidity out of the “correct choices” and convince you they are his own choices.  He can delight in the slurs and staccatos not because that’s the way they are meant to be played but because he can make you hear the way they dance (as the composer intended) and not draw attention to the minutiae but still revel in it.

            I still somewhat resent classical music for the same reason I hold a grudge against pop music – it sounds so simple that it could just as well have written itself.  Mozart’s harmonies are not complicated, and his melodies are so based in patterns and repetition that one eight measure theme easily spins into a 64-bar exposition.  And yet, a good performer can take that exposition and make you hear the same theme in such different lights that it’s new and fresh each time.

            James Ehnes’ performances here are a perfect example.  His phrasing brings out the natural beauty of the score, and elevates the composer’s intent instead of imposing his own.  The simplicity of the structure then does not bore, but rather seems natural and unforced.  It’s as if Mozart’s composition were a flawless surface of hardwood.  Where my 15 year old self would have struggled endlessly to paint a beautiful piece, Ehnes gently brushes a varnish so that every texture, every grain, every line is accentuated and elevated, not obscured.  If someone 15 years ago had only told me to put the paintbrush down…

Tomorrow – Revolver (The Beatles)

Next week – Beethoven: Symphony #3 “Eroica”