Last night in Herbst Theatre, Jeannette Sorrell continued her round of debut performances as guest conductor of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (PBO) with the San Francisco stage of the schedule. She presented a program entitled Mozart’s Musings, which surveyed the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the usual overture-concerto-symphony ordering, which also happened to provide a chronological account. The overture was taken from the K. 51 opera La finta semplice (the fake innocent), which Mozart composed at the age of twelve. The concerto then advanced to 1777, during Mozart’s service in Salzburg to Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus von Colloredo, with the K. 314 oboe concerto in C major. The symphony then concluded the program near the end of Mozart’s life in Vienna with a performance of the familiar K. 550 symphony in G minor.
The concerto soloist was PBO oboist Gonzalo X. Ruiz, playing on a period-appropriate instrument. His command of the oboe was consistently solid and reliable, adjectives that are seldom applied to instruments from the eighteenth century. On such instruments just getting the notes right involves a fortunate combination of breath control, fingering agility, and a generous portion of luck. In spite of his instrument’s reputation, Ruiz delivered a confident and solid account, which even allowed for a bit of improvisation in his cadenza work. The music itself presented Mozart at his most playful, and both Ruiz and Sorrell knew exactly how to channel Mozart’s spirit into a memorable account of a challenging concerto that deserves more listening attention than it tends to get.
Sorrell was also at the top of her game in delivering an expressive account of the K. 550 symphony. This symphony is so well known that many listeners tend to take a here-we-go-again approach whenever it appears on a concert program. However, Sorrell’s baton work suggested that she was more interested in the energy contour across the symphony’s four movements that she was in how many listeners already knew all the tunes. Thus, the few measures that precede the first theme statement already suggested that a dynamo was kicking into action; and Sorrell knew exactly how to sustain its propulsion all the way to the final cadence of the fourth movement.
The opening measures of Mozart’s K. 550 (from the 1880 Breitkopf & Härtel publication, from IMSLP, public domain)
It is also worth calling out the attentiveness of her sense of balance. Looking at the score pages, one can almost see a string quartet with a few extra instruments; and, where “thematic action” is concerned, the viola line is as significant as those for the violins and cellos, just as is the case in the string quartets that Mozart and his friend Joseph Haydn were both writing and playing. Sorrell knew how to draw attention to what was happening “under the hood” while never depriving the familiar themes of their proper place in the spotlight.
As to that K. 51 opera, the program notes by Bruce Lamott were a bit dismissive of the overall effort. He observed that Mozart had never been in Italy and this was his first venture into a three-act Italian opera. However, after calling out the shortcomings, he observed that the overture “speaks Italian fluently.” The music itself is a three-movement affair, a structure that would go out of favor by the time Mozart made his move to Vienna. Sorrell gave it a brisk and expressive account, which probably would do well to reinforce Lamott’s claim that the overture is the best part of the entire opera.
That operatic setting then continued into the one selection on the program that was not by Mozart. It was a suite of instrumental excerpts from two operas by André Grétry, Zémire et Azor and La caravane du Caire, both based on “exotic” plots. On the musical side, that exoticism was most evident in the selections from the second of these two operas. Taken as a while, the suite served as a “spacer,” separating the two distinct stages of Mozart’s life covered by the overture and the concerto. Sorrell knew how to draw expressiveness for Grétry’s score, but Mozart was still the center of attention for the evening.
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