Word: mozarts
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Lehmann got a chance to put his impressive verve on display, leading a program of works that would have come to nothing without verve. The concert began with the overture to Mozart's The Magic Flute, a work with self-evident charm. Its first notes were jarring from lack of unison, but things picked up quickly. The brass enjoyed a fine moment, as did flutist Kimberly Arkin '98. The finale hinted loudly at the volume of sound the orchestra would transmit later in the evening...
...second part of the program made for a strange coincidence: that same evening, the BSO performed both the overture to The Magic Flute and a Mozart piano concerto. But if you missed hearing Freshman Concerto Competition winner Andrew Park '01 because you were at Symphony Hall for Murray Perahia, you may have missed...
Park's Harvard debut (Mozart's ninth piano concerto, in E-flat, K. 271) was stunning, in part because it didn't require some blatantly virtuosic vehicle. When a fellow who played the Rachmaninoff Second at the age of 14 decides to gamble on his musicianship more than on his technique, it is doubly impressive...
Park's performance of the first movement had a smoothness that was sometimes even glib; the orchestra must have found it hard to follow. His trills were appealingly steady and even, and his left hand octaves (so often bangily overdone in Mozart) were gems of control--in this surpassing even Andreas Haefliger's performance in last year's Bank of Boston Celebrity Series. But beyond pure technique, his pedaling and phrase-shaping demonstrated a great ear. The orchestra adequately reinforced and developed all the musical ideas, but Park's was the artistic voice of authority...
Anyone accusing early Mozart of levity should listen to the second moment of this concerto from the composer's 21st year. Though here and elsewhere Mozart (wisely) rejected the melodrama of the salon, only here does he replace it with fine arioso writing. The music lost some of its poignant punch, frankly because of some tuning problems in the orchestra, but was still smile-inducingly lovely...