Labadie Returns to SFS with More Mozart

Conductor Bernard Labadie (photograph by Winnie Au, courtesy of SFS)

The last time Bernard Labadie visited the podium of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), he divided his program between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the first half and Joseph Haydn in the second. Yesterday afternoon he returned to Davies Symphony Hall, this time with a program devoted entirely to Mozart. The soloist was soprano Lucy Crowe, who sang an aria from the K. 344 opera Zaide along with two concert arias, both of which were being performed by SFS for the first time, one on either side of the intermission. In addition, she introduced the Zaide offering with the K. 577 rondo “Al desi, di chi t’adora.” The two arias that flanked the intermission were “Schon lacht der holde Frühling” (K. 580) and K. 490, “Non temer, amato bene,” with a recitative introduction, “Venga la morte.”

With the exception of the Zaide aria, these offerings provided a thoroughly engaging journey of discovering how Mozart could approach vocal music without the context of an opera narrative. Crowe found just the right way to convey expressiveness that was not conceived to enhance a larger-scale narrative. Indeed, K. 490 was scored as a duet for soprano and violin (performed by Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik). Sadly, over the course of this one occasion when the two of them were performing “together as equals,” they did not always succeed in balancing their respective parts.

The instrumental offerings provided a variation on the usual overture-concerto-symphony plan. Since the vocal offerings served as the “concerto” the musical selection between the overture and the symphony was the K. 477 “Masonic Funeral Music.” This latter was characterized by a rich selection of winds. Mozart made some changes in overall instrumentation to find just the right tone of darkness. He eventually settled on three basset horns and a contrabassoon, whose collective sonorities could not have been more engaging.

The overture for the program was the one Mozart composed for his final opera, the K. 621 La clemenza di Tito. As a result, everything but the concluding symphony made for a throughly engaging journey through seldom performed Mozart works. Familiarity came at the end with the K. 543 symphony in E-flat major, the first of the “big three” symphonies that conclude the catalog of Mozart’s contribution to this genre. As a clarinet player in the past, I appreciated the attention that Mozart gave to that instrument, particularly in the Trio for the third movement; and I relished every phrase of Carey Bell’s interpretation of that music!