The Mozart Society of California presented pianist Robert Levin in an all Mozart recital on Wednesday evening, November 18 at Sunset Center in Carmel.
Exposure to the dazzling mind of Robert Levin is an event you are not likely to forget. Mr. Levin is well versed in every aspect of Mozart's life and has an historian's vast perspective of the late 18th century European musical milieu in which Mozart played such a significant role. The printed program for the evening's event told us a lot about Mr. Levin's impressive musical accomplishments. Graduating from Harvard at 20, he was invited to head the theory department at the Curtis Institute of Music. He subsequently became a professor of music at SUNY, directed the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau for one year, and was for several years chairman of the piano department at the University of Freiburg. He is now a professor of performance practice at Harvard University.
Speaking quite audibly from the stage (without amplification, I might add, despite the much maligned acoustics of Sunset Center), the charming Mr. Levin gave us a running commentary on the music he was performing. One of his goals, he said, was to show us aspects of Mozart's personality and music with which we are less familiar.
And this he did. He opened the program by pairing the
Andante in C Major, K.1a and the
Adagio in C Major, K. 617a. Thus, his opening selections consisted of the first and last pieces that Mozart composed for the piano, giving us, so to speak, an "alpha to omega" view of Mozart's keyboard style. The K.1a was a brief 20 seconds (most probably notated by his father since Mozart was only six at the time) and not a work of any great intrinsic value. The
Adagio, K.617a that followed was a horse of a different color. It is a brief work of only 28 measures duration composed for the glass harmonica. Levin achieved a spectacular feat of magical coloring by playing the work
pianissimo with liberal use of the soft pedal. It was uncanny how he so successfully achieved a ghostly, ethereal sound suggestive of the glass harmonica.
Among the rarities on the program were two modulating preludes that I am sure no one in the audience had previously heard. Levin used the first prelude to modulate from the F Major Piano Sonata, K.533/494 to the Prelude & Fugue in C Major, K.394/383a. The second prelude he used to modulate from Mozart's own arrangement of the Overture to the "Abduction from the Seraglio" to the final work on the program, the Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, K.333.
Incidentally, the Mozart arrangement of the Overture was one of the most effective works on the program. Levin played a short excerpt from a standard piano vocal score of the opera to illustrate how awkward the orchestral realization is from the pen of someone who merely attempted to do a literal orchestral reduction. Then, when he played Mozart's version, it sounded like one of Mozart's original piano scores.
During the intermission members of the audience were invited to write out musical themes or fragments thereof and deposit them in a box in the lobby. Right after intermission the box was handed to him on stage and he selected several themes and then proceeded to weave them into a free fantasy of approximately ten minutes duration. It was a great stunt and the audience loved it.
After dispensing with the musical rarities, there were two works of substance on the evening's program, the Sonata in F Major, K.533/494 and the Sonata in B-flat Major, K.394/383a, and they made a curious impression. In the past fifty years it has become unfashionable for pianists to play what is referred to as "hyphenated Bach," that is to say, Bach-Busoni, Bach-Tausig, Bach-Siloti or Bach Godowsky, etc. We have become accustomed to hearing Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart and other composers in more or less pure form, presented with the fruits of the most recent performance practice scholarship.
I am certainly not an advocate of the discredited "Dresden doll" approach to Mozart playing where everything is restrained and precious. But, Mr. Levin's Mozart often didn't sound like Mozart at all, but rather like Mozart in the style of Edvard Grieg or Christian Sinding. His playing was frequently too loud (especially his left hand), articulations were smoothed out, tempos were too rushed for clarity, jagged accents intruded, and his passages were overpedaled and blurred. I was reminded of remarks made by Mozart in his letters to his father about rival pianists, mentioning that "the passages didn't flow like oil" or the pianist put his pedal down and played everything too fast.
We have been led to believe that Mozart playing should be about clarity, elegance, refinement and finesse. What was missing from Mr. Levin's playing was the beauty and enchantment we so love in Mozart's music. Since Mr. Levin is a Professor of Performance Practice at Harvard University, perhaps he is about to rewrite the book about performance practice in Mozart's keyboard works. Time will tell.
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