Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Schoenberg
The Mozarteum Orchestra‘s concert tonight in the Mozarteum featured a little night music, but none of it by Mozart – rather a much more interesting program of Mendelssohn, Berlioz, and Schoenberg under the baton of Leopold Hager (a native Salzburger, who had served as chief conductor of this orchestra from 1969-1981).
The Overture and some excerpts from Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummernight’s Dream made for a welcome opening. In reality, this is not really night music, but Shakespearean comedy, for which Mendelssohn captured the charm in notes, and the orchestra tonight brought out the full color. It might have been nice to have the complete set of incidental music.
Real night music came next, with Summer Nights, a song cycle by Berlioz (with soprano Juliane Banse joining Hager and the Mozarteum Orchestra). These songs individually were pensive laments, but collectively the cycle did not work so well – the mood was too similar and did not vary (as, say, Schubert or Mahler song cycles might, even when they are also pensively lamenting), and this gave more drag than drive. Banse’s voice was pleasant when contained, and large enough to project clearly and express emotion, but when projecting it sometimes turned a tad sour, more sour than the lamenting might justify.
The real treat of the evening came after the intermission, with Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night in the version the composer himself made for string orchestra. This version, in my opinion, works better than the original sextet, allowing thicker sonorities and far more emotion. Although a more than half-hour instrumental setting of a single poem, Schoenberg takes the listener through an emotional ride, into the deepest thoughts and souls of the two protagonists. The Mozarteum Orchestra strings truly demonstrated their worth this evening, with Hager’s shaping, to draw out the little ravishing details for a heartfelt interpretation – not only telling the story but conveying its deep sympathetic meaning without uttering a word.
Charles Ehrlich's Musical Notes 