Mozarteum Orchestra: Stiftung Mozarteum Grosser Saal

I heard the Mozarteum Orchestra today and they were very good indeed. Mozart is sort of a good way to end this festival for me. Some of the best performances of these pieces I have heard and that is including recorded versions. The program was the Divertimento in B flat, K 137 written when he was fifteen, the Piano Concerto in B flat, K. 595, written just eleven months before his death and the Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550.

Mozart began composing when he was five years old (a simple minuet) and died when he was thirty-five, so he had thirty good years. With most composers, everything they write before they are twenty is usually what is called "juvenilia" that is, pieces in a tentative or mixed style where the composer has not yet "found" himself. But I don't think I have ever heard a piece by Mozart that you could call juvenilia. He was capable of writing a very respectable aria for soprano and string orchestra when he was nine and he wrote his first opera, in Latin, when he was eleven. The Divertimento K. 137 is a finely written three movement piece for strings that appears entirely mature.

The piano concerto was very well played by Francesco Piemontesi, a young Italian pianist. He played an encore and I am going to go out on a limb and say it was probably by Schubert, though I am not sure of the piece.

The final piece, the Symphony no. 40 was as well played as I have ever heard it: crisp, dynamic, energetic and passionate. I was most interested to see that the horn parts were played on natural horns without valves. I found they really added a lot as their sound, especially in the upper register is much brighter and has a tinny edge to it that I really like. I don't mean "tinny" in a bad sense, just that the sound is flatter and cuts through more. The rest of the winds looked like modern ones so I wonder if the Mozarteum orchestra is in transition to an original instruments group. The conductor, the English Andrew Manze certainly has experience in that area.

The concert was in the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum (not to be confused with the Grosser Studio) which is a lovely hall with an 18th century ambiance:

If you look very closely you might be able to see the natural horn held by the fellow kind of in the middle, second row from top:

Click to enlarge

Afterwards was a nice dark weissbier and half a pig's knuckle for lunch. It looked ok, but was rather tough and salty, the first disappointing dish I have had here.