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Perhaps on the theory that you can't get enough of a good
thing, the Miami International Piano Festival of Discovery
decided, for its fifth anniversary, to ask pianists to play
Mozart concertos.
Igor Gruppman, the Florida Philharmonic's brilliant concertmaster,
was called in to play and conduct Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante
for Violin, Viola and Orchestra with his violist wife, Vesna.
The results, however, were more satisfying in theory than
in performance.
There was plenty of great music to choose from. Mozart wrote
27 piano concertos, not only because he was prolific but because
he was also a traveling virtuoso often in need of something
new to play, whether or not the ink had dried or whether he
had time to run through the rondo.
Being a celestial visitor on a workaday planet, he could
do this without turning into a hack. He left inquisitive pianists
a treasure house of music. But Mozart's music demands more
than met the ear Saturday night at Broward Center's Amaturo
Theater.
Of Gruppman I expected glistening, incisive playing of the
Sinfonia's violin solo, and I got it.
But this score demands superb dovetailing and equal artistry
on every level, and while Vesna Gruppman seems a reasonably
skilled violist, she was not the player with the pungent tone
and power of projection to match her husband.
Nor was the orchestra on a consistently high level, despite
stellar horn work from Thomas Hadley and Dwayne Dixon and
winds that were often a pleasure -- especially Henry Skolnick's
finely etched bassoon solos.
Piotr Anderszewski's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K.
491, conducted from the keyboard, was the best of the three
piano concerto performances.
He took a Beethoven-style tack that was big in scale, plangent
in tone and verging on stormy. But it was not at all out of
character. Remember, Beethoven liked this score and drew inspiration
from it when composing his Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor.
Anderszewski caught the hint of melancholy in Mozart's mood,
his dark drama and poetry. But Anderszewski's own first movement
cadenza seemed arid and his extended pause near the end of
the finale was not just exaggerated but pretentious.
Pietro De Maria chose the Concerto No. 9 in E flat, one of
the most noble and shadowed of all Mozart's piano concertos,
but did nothing more with it than sound neat, clean, clear
and clipped in the outer movements and studied in his contemplation
of the slow movement. It is far richer in tender inflection
than he made it. For the real thing, hear Dame Myra Hess on
records.
Francesco Libetta, though, was the deepest disappointment.
A pianist blessed with fleet, supple fingers, his Mozart --
the Concerto No. 21 in C major -- was a surface manifestation.
It lacked a probing heart and mind, a beautiful, iridescent
tone and, surprisingly, a degree of respect for Mozart.
It's one thing to doodle in your own noodling cadenza or
even to create ornamentation for this concerto. Pianists from
Yefim Bronfman to Chick Corea have done that. But Libetta's
flippant glissando in the finale, which seemed to have strayed
out of Weber's Konzertstuck, smacked of condescension.
A performance of one of Mozart's greatest works shouldn't
be a showcase for personal display, but rather for displaying
the music.
James Roos is The Herald's music critic.
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