A festive night of music

By John Farnworth
From The Register-Guard

THE OREGON Bach Festival concert Wednesday evening in the Hult Center's Silva Hall featured compositions by W.A. Mozart and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. With composers of this caliber, we were assured of some ravishing music. What we also received was a palpable joy in music-making!

Through facial expressions and body language, the orchestra, piano soloist Robert Levin and conductor Helmuth Rilling conveyed their pleasure in bringing the printed notes to life. The musicians were all very good and rightfully proud of their performance.

They played Mendelssohn's Overture to "Die Heimkehr aus de Fremde (The Homecoming From Abroad)" with the melodic, fragile, quivering, laughing characteristics that so typify young Mendelssohn. Exchanges between the strings, winds and brass were light, crisp and meticulously timed.

Mozart's Concerto in A Major for Piano and Orchestra (K.488) featured Levin, a consummate artist who has become an important and popular figure in the festival. Many pianists play this piece exactly as written, rather sparely. Others, notably the great Alfred Brendel, re-create Mozart's almost certain propensity to flesh out the basic structure with embellishments and ornamentation. Maestro Levin followed in Brendel's footsteps, in spades!

Also following Mozart's own style, Levin very quietly played his instrument as a continuo during the orchestra-only passages.

The first movement, marked allegro, was taken more briskly than is often the case, accentuating the gallantry and perhaps suppressing the sadness. Mozart's skill in pitching the strings with and against the wind instruments was beautifully rendered; the flute, clarinets, bassoons and French horns contributing graceful poignancy to the progression of the piece. Levin's cadenza was torrential in places, brooklike in others, shifting the themes into several different keys with spine-tingling improvisation.

The second movement (adagio) in F sharp minor expresses melancholia bordering on despair, cradled in a serenely beautiful melody; Levin's adornments lightened the sadness a little. The movement ends with a simple seven-note theme, quietly played by the soloist over broken chords in the strings. Levin embellished these seven notes expressively and inventively; to my ears, however, those precious notes can stand alone.

In the exuberant final movement (Allegro assai), Levin had some fun, making Liberace-like arcs as his hands left the keyboard, peering at the wind players as they answered his musical statements, adding to the feeling that everyone was having a wonderful time. The concert ended with Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 1 in C minor. The third movement, an orchestrated version of the scherzo from Mendelssohn's famous octet, was a favorite movement for orchestra and audience alike. The last movement (allegro con fuoco) was the jewel in the crown of the entire symphony. A particularly beautiful section featured the hurrying, hushed strings beneath a gorgeous clarinet solo floating out into the huge space of Silva Hall. All sections played superbly; the winds were ravishing.

John Farnworth of Vida reviews classical music for The Register-Guard.