Music in NYC: Mozart a la Haydn by Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and Steven Osborne, piano

Mostly Mozart Festival Finale with Mozart à la Haydn program performed by pianist Steven Osborne and Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra with Louis Langrée conducting on Friday, August 9, 2019 at 7:30 pm and Saturday, August 10, 2019 at 7:30 pm at David Geffen Hall

Steven Osborne, piano, Louis Langree, conductor, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra — Steven Osborne, piano (photo Benjamin Ealovega), Louis Langree, conductor (photo Jennifer Taylor), Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra (photo Richard Termine)

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra’s 2019 season ends on a lighthearted note, with four works that are more connected than they may seem at first glance. Pianist Steven Osborne performs the cheerful piano concerto Shostakovich composed for his son Maxim’s 19th birthday. Maxim, then a budding pianist, is said to have been the inspiration for the tongue-in-cheek inclusion of the Hanon piano exercises in the final movement, a musical joke. Schnittke displays a similar sense of humor in his Moz-Art à la Haydn, in which every note in the piece has been repurposed from either Haydn or Mozart. Beginning with dimmed lights, it quotes Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, incorporating stage-play among the musicians, and, like the Farewell, leaving the conductor alone at the end. Mozart’s beloved “Haffner” Symphony, one of the composer’s most challenging, yet fun, works, is a joyous conclusion to the summer.

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Program

Haydn: Overture in D major, Hob. Ia:7

Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 102

Schnittke: Moz-Art à la Haydn

Mozart: Symphony No. 35 in D major, K.385 (“Haffner”)

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Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival: Don Giovanni by Budapest Festival Orchestra

Ivan Fischer, conductor and director

Don Giovanni by Max Slevogt, 1912

This year Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center brings back to New York a fascinating production of opera Don Giovanni. The performance will take place at the Rose Theater at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Frederick P. Rose Hall.

Mozart wrote this opera to a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte which was based on the legend about Don Juan, a philanderer and seducer. Premiered at the National Theater of Bohemia in Prague in 1787, it was billed by Mozart himself as opera buffa. However, this particular rendition of the story is much more a tragedy and a learning lesson than a comedy or a melodrama.

Ivan Fischer, co-founder and conductor of Budapest Festival Orchestra, was also directing the production. In an interview by NPR in anticipation of the opening in 2011, Fischer points out that this dual role as conductor and director lets him offer “much more unified experience” for the actors. The resulting accents in the story are on bringing the villain to justice. The costume, stage design and casting of the students of Bucharest Acting Academy in the supporting ensemble are both innovative and highly appropriate. Instead of a singing statue, the actors costumes are designed to resemble the stones serving as both the silent elements of the design and the embodiment of the fate and consequence that gets a final say. The New York Times review of the performance back in 2011 highlights the “climactic moment staged to such haunting effect” under Fischer’s direction.

Tag: Mostly Mozart Festival