Royal Festival Hall
Mozart – Piano Concerto no.17
in G major, KV 453
Bartók – DivertimentoMozart – Piano Concerto no.25 in C major, KV 503
Mitsuko Uchida (piano/director)
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
‘Yes, of course I’m here,’ I
tweeted a few minutes before the concert, with a picture of the programme and
performers. Two Mozart piano concertos from Mitsuko Uchida and the Mahler
Chamber Orchestra, with the Bartók Divertimento
in between: give or take a piece by Schoenberg, I could hardly have asked for
more. Perhaps, then, my expectations were unrealistic, for I found myself a
little disappointed by the performance of the G major Piano Concerto,
especially its first movement. I was impressed that Uchida had rethought,
sometimes quite radically, the approach I recall from her celebrated recording
with Jeffrey Tate and the English Chamber Orchestra. However, I was not
entirely convinced. It was partly a matter of coming to terms with the Festival
Hall acoustic, I think, in so intimate a performance, but it was not only that.
Nevertheless, intrigued and slightly nonplussed is surely better than bored by
the ‘same old’.
The orchestra opened crisply,
stylishly, but sounded a little undernourished in the opening tutti. Uchida was, I think, faster,
certainly more impish, than in her ECO recording. There is nothing wrong with
that, but her non legato passages
struck me as odd: I could not work out why they were being played as they were,
although she certainly had me listen – and puzzle. Phrasing remained beyond
reproach, though, and the chamber quality to the performance as a whole had its
advantages. Indeed, the concerto sounded very much the companion piece to the
Piano Quintet, KV 452, with which, if I remember correctly, was the coupling
for that concerto recording. Only occasionally was a fuller orchestral sound
unleashed, but Uchida was – interestingly – considerably more muscular in her
approach to the recapitulation. The cadenza offered an amalgam of the different
tendencies we had heard, for better and for worse. I liked the lessening of
string vibrato at the opening of the slow movement, as if launching an operatic
accompagnato – which, in a sense, it
is. Various wind soloists and ultimately the piano soloist responded with
greater warmth; however, I was nevertheless quite taken aback – positively – by
the frankly Romantic minor-mode playing, whether overtly passionate, or more innig. This and the finale were, for me,
far more involving. They both seemed to benefit also from a more settled, more juste, tempo. (Both are often taken too
fast.) The finale’s particular character, Papageno chafing at the bit, was
conveyed with that crucial sense of effortlessness. Classical variation form,
too often the butt of ill-considered denigration, was vindicated in the best
way possible. Piano and flute sforzandi
seemed to hint at Beethoven; again, I do not remember hearing the passages in
question played like that before.
Uchida withdrew for the Bartók,
played standing (save for the cellos), directed from the leader’s desk by
Matthew Truscott – and very well too. The first movement announced a
variegated, energetic (in the best sense) approach, yielding nicely at times,
in almost Viennese style. There was again a happy sense of chamber scale,
without in this case ever sounding remotely underpowered. The slow movement
opened inwardly, mysteriously, not quite glacial, but not quite the contrary
either. Its contours were well traced, with a keen sense of drama on offer
throughout. There were many gradations of relative thawing and outright
contrast to be enjoyed. Idiomatic, never clichéd, the ‘Hungarian’ qualities to
the performance of the finale sang out, yet never dominated unduly. The relationship
between solo and ripieno playing was very much at the heart of the MCO’s
music-making. Bachian contrapuntal lessons had been well learned, so as to
emerge as agents of liberation – just as they always should be. There was
menace too, and more than a hint of bitter irony.
Amongst smaller-scale recordings
of what I have long thought of as Mozart’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto, I have long
admired that from Alfred Brendel, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and
the late Neville Marriner. Again, I was taken by surprise quite how different
Uchida’s performance here was: more rhetorical, although always directed
towards its tonal goal. Trumpets and drums seemed to have emboldened the MCO
strings too. Oscillation between tonic major and minor was rightly at the heart
of the performance; Charles Rosen would surely have approved. The measured
tempo was well chosen, providing plenty of space for the musical argument to
unfold, and to be dramatised. There was not perhaps quite the dramatic
conception of a Daniel Barenboim here, but there is more than one way to play a
Mozart concerto; Uchida’s ‘incidental’ flights of fancy were not to be
slighted, and here seemed better integrated. The cadenza offered hints of
Beethoven, all to the good in this ‘imperial’ work. Uchida’s slow movement
offered ‘chamber’ contrast. Mozart was cherished, heartrendingly so, but never
suffocated, in this garden of late, yet not too late, delights. An
unexaggerated dialectic between fragility and ebullience characterised the
finale. What could be more Mozartian? Uchida again proved perhaps surprisingly
mercurial, rhetorical too. Whatever my doubts about the first concerto, this was
a delight to the last.
