Word: mozarts
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Three brilliant virtuosos guaranteed the success of last Friday's Bank-Boston Celebrity Series concert. Leila Josefowicz, a violinist who has survived being branded a child prodigy, performed in two concertos. Andreas Haefliger, a Mozart specialist, was the pianist in another. Jaime Laredo, darling of countless Sony recording projects, conducted the Brandenburg Ensemble and joined Josefowicz as a soloist. All the repertoire was light and bright and ideally suited to the orchestra...
Their perfect accord in the largo made for the greatest single movement of the evening. This sky-scrapingly beautiful duet is one of Bach's greatest achievements, presaging the slow movements of Mozart violin concertos and Beethoven piano concertos. Standing there, gazing at each other, Josefowicz and Laredo looked like intense conversation partners who just happened to be holding violins: Sensitive to the largo's lullaby cadences, Laredo nudged the ensemble to produce a tender, if totally subdued, accompaniment...
...flat piano concerto, K. 271, is Mozart's best such early work. It shows a surprising willingness to disturb the conventionally perfect balance between soloist and orchestra and is driven mostly by the pianist, who must have great endurance. Haefliger, who played with an accompanist's ear when necessary, gracefully allowed Laredo to rescue the concerto from merely unilateral appeal...
...also because the piano sounded fantastic. The Steinway trilled and sang under Haefliger's fingers, projecting pianissimo lines that were clear no matter how loudly the orchestra played. But the lowest registers were almost over-responsive: Haefliger's loudest octaves sounded like they belonged in Liszt or Busoni, not Mozart...
...Mozart's symphonies without subtitles, his 29th is the second most widely performed, after the 40th. Rather than suffering from overexposure, the symphony is still fresh on a sixth or seventh listen. Its attractively slight orchestration calls for strong individual performances of the sort that the Brandenburg Ensemble was especially prepared to offer. After three second-billings in a row, the group gave an authoritative reading of each of the four movements...