St John’s Smith Square
Piano Concerto no.20 in D
minor, KV 466
London Mozart Players
Howard Shelley (piano/director)
For the first of these
lunchtime Mozart Explored concerts at St John’s, Smith Square, the London
Mozart Players had offered the audience the opportunity to choose which of
Mozart’s piano concertos – from those already performed in the series – would be
played. We are all Romantics now, so perhaps it is no surprise that the D minor
Concerto won. Howard Shelley first offered a few thematic pointers: not really
an analysis, nothing contextual, more in the manner of old-fashioned (not that
there is anything wrong with that) ‘musical appreciation’. Then we heard –
perhaps ironically, given my musing as to why this concerto might have been
chosen – a performance that tended to stress Mozart’s Classicism as opposed to
his incipient Romanticism.
The virtues of Shelley’s – and the
orchestra’s – approach were immediately apparent. There was nothing remotely
murky to the lower strings at the opening to the first movement. Precision was
married to dramatic power, the two shown to be dependent on each other, not
fuzzy antitheses. There was pathos too, whether from angelic woodwind or
sighing violins. The almost vintage ‘Classicism’ of Shelley’s tone upon entering
put me in mind of earlier (often English) pianists, Ian Hobson one who came to
mind (if only because a cassette of his was one of the first Mozart piano concerto
recordings I owned). There was nothing of the ‘historically informed’ to what
we heard, but nor was there anything of, say, Daniel Barenboim’s grander, more
Furtwänglerian approach. Weighting of notes, of phrases was always considered,
never pedantic. It was not an unyielding reading, perhaps most notably when it
came to the second group’s reiteration of the tonic minor during the
recapitulation, but the basic pulse was always clear. Sometimes I missed the
fire of a Barenboim, but one cannot have everything in a single reading. The
Beethoven cadenza, however, whilst given with great dignity, sounded more
different from the rest than it might have done in a more ‘Romantic’
performance of the work as a whole: nothing wrong with that, but it attested to
a somewhat different conception of Mozart.
Again, to continue with our too-easy
typology, the slow movement sounded more ‘Classical’ than ‘Romantic’. Its
performance was possessed of a quiet, yet far from cold, dignity and integrity –
not so quiet, of course, during the (relatively) tempestuous central episode,
which retained admirable clarity. Shelley offered some light piano
ornamentation. Counterpoint and melody were held in good Mozartian equipoise
during the finale. It was a dramatic reading, which yet did not jettison the
virtues of what had gone before. Hummel’s cadenza – Shelley is quite a Hummel
enthusiast – was interesting to hear, although I found it much as I find Hummel’s
music in general: lots of passagework, a little more ‘Romantic’, no great
depth. (Give me Beethoven any day!) The D major coda inescapably has one think
of Don Giovanni, albeit without the
cynicism or alienation of its final scene; so it did here. We were treated to
an accomplished traversal of the finale to the Jupiter Symphony as an encore.
