Lionel Bringuier & David Fray at Mostly Mozart

Tonight I attended a Mostly Mozart Concert at Lincoln Center that seemed more closely in line to the original conception of this festival than the prior concerts presented this season - an all-Mozart extravaganza.  The young French conductor Lionel Bringuier led performances of the Overture to Cosi fan tutte, K. 588, the Piano Concerto No. 22 in Eb, K. 482 (with David Fray as soloist), and the Symphony No. 38 ("Prague") in D, K. 504.  There were no encores - a bit surprising as the concert was actually short by usual standards, well under 2 hours, and the audience reactions were enthusiastic.

Young Maestro Bringuier (he is in his mid-20s) had things well in hand, leading enthusiastic, polished performances.  I didn't sense anything particularly distinctive about his Mozart - tempos seemed just, balances were good, and there were no interpretative idiosyncracies.  This was well-played, modern Mozart, not particularly affected by the discoveries of the early music scholars.  Everything was quite beautiful and the genius of the composer did its work.  Overall, a very satisfying concert.

I was especially interested to hear David Fray in a Mozart concerto, having enjoyed his recordings thus far on Virgin Classics as well as his performance of a Ravel Concerto with the NY Philharmonic last year.  He did not disappoint.  I was especially impressed by his interpolation of ornaments into the sometimes bare-boned piano part left by Mozart.  Mozart wrote most of his piano concerti with himself in mind as soloist, and in the fashion of the late 18th century used the written piano part as a foundation for improvised ornamentation.  When Mozart's music began to enjoy a modern revival in the mid-20th century, the fashion was to play just what was written, but the scholarship attendant on the revival produced the information that Mozart would have ornamented the line in his piano concerti, and so now pianists have "permission" to do this, and Fray's ornamentation was enjoyable.  I did think that the cadenzas by Edwin Fischer were just slightly discordant with the style of the music, but nonetheless fascinating.

I was also struck, yet again, by how brilliant this 22nd Piano Concerto is.  For some reason it does not get played as often as No. 20 - the dramatic D Minor - or the relatively brief No. 23 in A.  But it is surely among the finest of the composer's piano concerti, larger in scale than most, with extraordinary use of the woodwinds as a concertante group.  In the middle movement, there are substantial stretches where only the winds are playing and the piano soloist, surprisingly, sits mute for substantial stretches.  I wonder whether, since Mozart wrote the piece for his own use, the piano is mute for these long stretches because he would be conducting the woodwinds from the keyboard, and for balance and phrasing would be using both hands?  Just a spontaneous theory....,

This concert proved, if proof were still needed, that Mozart was such a genius that one can put together a totally satisfying concert consisting solely of his music.