Overture, Concerto, Symphony

A pattern emerges in the programming for this year’s Mostly Mozart Festival—and, though the orchestra is said to be renewed under a different title next summer, the final of a decades-long summer celebration. Contemporary compositions provide the amuse-bouche to a concerto, which then ends with a large symphonic statement of the Teutonic variety: the tried and true overture/concerto/symphony, a programming staple in orchestral houses if there ever was one.

Of course there are variations: the first pair of concerts opened with a quite long, hazy, and formless venture by Amir ElSaffar, blending Iraqi folk music, jazz, and Western classical traditions, before moving on to Mozart’s hour-long Mass in C minor. The third ended with a surprising though welcomed iteration of Hailstork’s first symphony. (I am not including ‘Tribute to Korea,’ performed only once and marketed with curious distinction to rest of the festival, though it certainly followed the prescription while squeezing in one more contemporary work before Beethoven’s Seventh.)

Allow me a quick digression to ask—why do so few contemporary composers not write symphonies? (Other than the obvious answer—few orchestras commission or, if so, perform them in repertory.) Though sometimes a bone is tossed in the form of a concerto—which makes the Hailstork performance so winning; I am sad to have missed it—the “first bill” slot for these contemporary works encourages compositions of a similar mold, thus influencing the compositional scope of the Sarah Gibsonses, Jessie Montgomeries, or Valerie Colemans of the world in order to make their music more marketable. In an environment that prioritizes larger symphonic statements of the dead, why waste time composing what will never programmed? See Doug Shadle’s 2018 twitter thread or recent podcast interview for a more thorough explanation around bias in music, particularly towards women and non-white composers.

The fourth series of the concerts, Gemma New leading our festive music-makers, opened with Sarah Gibson’s warp & weft. Inspired by the idea of a weaving loom, where strong, vertical harmonies describe the warp and melodic variations imply the horizontal weft, (the tool’s x- and y-axes, respectively) the piece was exquisitely orchestrated and thoughtfully designed. 

Gibson’s scalar piano ostinato, strings dampened with blue tac to create a punchy, mechanical sound—provided a unique opening texture and held my curiosity for some time as it accompanied the explorations of vertical and horizontal music. (Gibson is one half of Los Angele’s HOCKET duo, whose interest in non-traditional sounds connects overlaps with the extended and unusual techniques this piece requires, including vocalizations, scratch tone strings, and unpitched brass sounds.) Though the slower B section seemed to drag on for a bit, I was impressed by Gibson’s color palette, including paired cello/bass clarinet lines and Ryan Roberts’s extended oboe solo over a bed of sliding string glissandi.

While a firm performance overall, some moments seemed unsure and unbalanced; there’s a tendency with contemporary music, especially the very rhythmic variety, to overplay when the notes become difficult. I was always told as a student musician that “playing out” would make my tone sound more confident, regardless of my preparation. True virtuosity is found in playing complicated music quietly. Being loud doesn’t make one more correct—only noisier.

Gibson’s work heavily features quintuplets (a series of five notes) over beats of three or four, which are tricky to synchronize across unison sections in an orchestral tradition where repertoire rarely contains numbers indivisible by 2 or 3. The presumably short rehearsal time given to festival’s pacing—two unique programs per week!—surely didn’t help. Some sounds, like ripping paper, didn’t reverberate through the hall and instead were discovered only upon score study. Gibson’s warp & weft is a piece I’d like to revisit, perhaps with more attention paid to its nuances and orchestral colors.

Stewart Goodyear interpreted the evenings concerto, Mendelssohn’s Second in D minor, with a firm hand, reminding me as Gibson did that the piano is technically a percussion instrument. Every stroke of the key began with a clear, hard edge—useful in the first and third movements but perhaps too much for the second. With smaller forces like the MMFO strings and an open piano lid, there is little danger of not being heard—perhaps his tone is better suited to larger accompanying forces. I wonder, for contrast, how Goodyear plays Debussy—crystalline, or slightly smudgy, with pedal to eliminate the distance between notes.

Regardless, this performance was bright and fast. As his fingers traversed octaves up and down the keyboard, Goodyear’s astounding technique was clear, but I missed the small moments that make the spontaneity of live performance matter—subtleties of interpretation, or the Socratic drama between orchestra, conductor, and soloist. There were some halfhearted attempts at rubato, landing neither ahead nor behind the fence of tempo to make a clear impression one way or another.

Wait! A moment of bliss: in the transitory bar before the first cadenza, Mendelssohn scores a pair of trumpets at the octave. Weaker interpreatations might have the upper octave blaring forth—it is, after all, a sort of heraldic introduction—but in this execution the higher note played a supporting role to the lower, reinforcing the harmonic series and playing off an effective decrescendo to the piano’s entrance. New attempted the work without pause, but was stymied at the audience’s insistence after the first movement. Not a dig: Goodyear’s ecstatic flourishes made me want to clap, too.

As an encore, Goodyear brought out a self-composed work, which he assured via introduction we would love even more than Mendelssohn. “Panorama” is Goodyear’s version of annual steel band competitions in Trinidad, where band leaders are charged with writing the best arrangement of the year’s top five Calypso tunes. Though interesting in concept, and virtuosically fiery, its repetitive nature did not hold my interest.

Imagine an amalgamation of Strauss’s five best Viennese Waltzes, or the top Billboard hits of 2022: within such a narrow range, music of any genre lacks contrast as everything begins to sound the same. Calypso interpreted through the lens of Chopin—a composer that mined his own cultural history through the traditional Polonaise—would have been more engaging. It was nice, however, to learn something about Trinidadian music culture, which may have precisely been Goodyear’s point.

The concert ended with Mozart’s Symphony No. 38, accompanied by the light at least four phone screens. Clapping between movements is one thing, and I’m happy to dispense with the elitist persistence that it is to be avoided, (if the conductor’s arms are down, and the the tune wills you to smack your hands, then be excited! You can even move around in your seat or—quietly—tap your toe!) but is the concert hall defenseless against against the handy distraction we are all obligated to carry in purse or pocket?

I must apologize the woman in row ahead of mine, who was required to angle each mid-performance selfie to avoid my looming the background while her companion searched for internships, brightness all the way up! But lo, a gallant knight appears. I commend to a point the good-natured overeagerness of my section’s usher, who called out via lapel radio, not exactly sotte voce and no action by his fellow staff, one patron recording the performance from the orchestra. The performance is not defenseless after all, though I feel for the performers who surely could see the patron swiping away in the second row. If the following description feels light, you must forgive my divided attention.

So back to the music, where New delivered a finely structured but ordinary performance. With such familiar music, the conductor’s job is to bring out something new and personal without hammering the mold into a different shape. A near impossible and thankless task to be sure, especially with late-period Mozart. The music is limned with such direct lines and forward momentum that bely the space or humor of his early music. If New wanted to take a dramatic pause, or a few seconds of rubato, the music provides little space for it. This is Mozart with something to say, a chip on his shoulder, though unaware he had but five years left to speak.

She did make one choice, however—taking the third and final movement at blistering speed. Just when I thought I had heard little from the flutes (double reed and string textures taking prominence in the second movement, though in some recordings the flute dominates even there), principal Jasmine Choi gave the rapid descending syncopations a delicious, throaty husk. Why the rush? No explanation required (insert joke about a dinner reservation or flight to catch here). The merry conclusion gleefully kickstarted my jaunt home, and its memory will put a kick in my step when I return on Saturday for conductor Jonathan Hayward and contemporary opener, followed by a concerto and, after that, a symphony.