Conductors and "the vision thing'

I picked up an important lesson in the art of conducting many years ago when I heard two performances of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra. Davis Jerome’s Mozart Society presented the first performance, with two young soloists from the troupe then known as the Concerto Soloists (now the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia). It was a beautiful, warm event, with a touching dialogue between the violin and the viola.

I spent several months looking forward to another glowing experience when I saw the Philadelphia Orchestra was doing the Sinfonia later that season. The scheduled soloists were two of the Orchestra’s most popular musicians: associate concertmaster William de Pasquale and his brother Joseph, the veteran head of the viola section.

That performance was a major disappointment— and about halfway through it I realized why: The conductor, Riccardo Muti, had positioned the soloists between him and the orchestra, and he was conducting them as if they were merely two more members of the orchestra. I heard none of the dialogue I had heard in the first performance. The de Pasquale brothers were locked into the conductor’s control panel, with no opportunity to add the nuances and shadings a soloist normally contributes to a concerto.

Putting soloists where they belong

Karl Middleman didn’t make that mistake when he conducted the Sinfonia at the latest concert by his Philadelphia Classical Symphony. Middleman’s performance also featured two Philadelphia Orchestra musicians: violinist Hirono Oka, who serves as Middleman’s concertmaster, and the Orchestra’s new principal viola, Choon-Jin Chang. Middleman positioned the soloists where they belong— in front of the audience, behind the conductor’s back— and the audience heard a true collaboration. The soloists acted like soloists and the orchestra fulfilled its role as an accompanist and a third voice.

Some of the most moving moments in the Sinfonia are the passages in which the two instruments play unaccompanied, with no guidance from the conductor. When the conductor stands back and lets the soloists react to each other, chamber music style, the unaccompanied sections become a moving, intimate conversation.

That’s three performances of the same score, with three different pairs of soloists— two successes and one dud. And the major difference between the dud and the successes was the conductor’s attitude. Muti did some wonderful things during his 12-year reign at the Philadelphia Orchestra (1980-92), but in this case the two lesser known regional conductors deserve the accolades.

This is the first time I’ve heard Chang solo since he replaced Roberto Diaz as principal viola when Diaz became the director of Curtis Institute two years ago. Earlier in the evening, Chang had picked up a violin and joined Oka in a piece for two violins and orchestra composed just before the French Revolution. The Chevalier Saint-George was a favorite during the last years of the ancien régime, and his Symphonie Concertante was an athletic display piece, with opportunities for both soloists to show their stuff.

Diaz is a hard act to follow, but Chang is obviously up to the job. He’s less intense than Diaz, but his more reserved style added its own emotional overtones to both pieces.

An interesting ‘classical conversation’

Conductor Mischa Santora and pianist Shai Wosner presented one of the more interesting “classical conversations” after the latest Sunday afternoon Chamber Orchestra concert. Both of them got into the details of interpretation when they answered questions from the audience, and both emphasized the operatic nature of the non-operatic pieces on the program.

Wosner referred to specific places where his part in Mozart’s Ninth Piano Concerto resembled an operatic aria. Santora saw Haydn’s 86th symphony as a series of operatic gestures. Haydn wrote some 40 operas, Santora pointed out. They’re rarely played today but they represented an important part of his output in his own time.

Another impressive young conductor

Santora’s remarks struck me as another example of the underlying principle that affected my reaction to three conductors’ versions of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante. One of the most important aspects of all the arts is the artist’s overall vision of the piece under construction. As I’ve learned from my own literary efforts, somewhere in your mind you need a picture of the shape and mood you’re trying to attain. You may not be able to put that picture into words, but if you lack that vision, a work becomes as uninspiring as an organization without a mission.

No doubt musicologists could fill journals with objections to Santora’s operatic emphasis. It doesn’t matter. He brought a personal vision to the scores he was conducting and the results showed. The three items on the program were all standards, but they all sounded fresh and alive. The slow movement of the Haydn symphony even touched the kind of emotional depths that most of us associate with Beethoven and Brahms.

As I’ve noted before, the Chamber Orchestra’s young director, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, is parading an impressive series of young colleagues across the Perelman stage. Add Santora to the “worth watching” list.