Mozart Matinee

Weekend mornings at 11am the Festival has Mozart Matinees in the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum. The orchestra is the Mozarteum Orchestra and there are guest soloists and conductors. This morning those two roles were embodied in the person of Jörg Widmann, clarinetist, conductor and composer. The program was the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, the Clarinet Concerto Kv 622 and the Symphony No. 41 in C major, "Jupiter." Let's have a listen to that overture, perhaps the best one ever:

They did a terrific job, by the way, and the magnificent setting of the gold and white Grosser Saal certainly didn't hurt. Maestro Widman also did a wonderful job with the clarinet concerto and one had the feeling that rarely had one ever hear the clarinet played as well. After intermission was the "Jupiter" Symphony of which the last movement is my candidate for best symphonic finale ever.

Unfortunately, for me, unease set in from the very opening when the first phrase was followed by a giant luftpause (where everything just hangs in the air for a moment before continuing). So already the momentum was broken and this movement should have a lot of momentum. As things unfolded there were gratuitous and exaggerated rallentandos and capricious phrasing. Also, from where I was sitting, in the right side balcony, the balance was off. The principal bassoon was too loud and I could barely hear the trumpets. The second and third movements were all right, but the momentum problems returned in the last movement. Altogether a somewhat disappointing concert. I suppose that with very familiar repertoire like this I am more fussy than with music I know less well.

I was shocked to see that the matinee concert was the most expensive ticket of all and I had the worst seat with bad sight lines. Both the Vienna Philharmonic Beethoven concert and the musicAeterna Rameau concert were actually less expensive and I had better seats.

No concert tomorrow. By the way, I said earlier that I requested a ticket to Berlioz' Damnation of Faust but I thought it had been cancelled. Not so, it is being performed tomorrow, but I just wasn't allotted a ticket. Every concert, except the lieder one, by the way, has been sold out or nearly so. It seems that Salzburg has successfully rescued its festival from COVID hell! And good for them.

Let's have a listen to a performance of the Mozart 41 finale with lots of momentum. This is Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert: