Chestnut Hiller conducts brilliant Mozart program

by MICHAEL CARUSO

My weekend got underway Friday night with a fabulous solo piano recital given by Yefim Bronfman in the Perelman Theater. Across Commonwealth Plaza on the same evening, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philadelphia Singers Chorale were performing Johannes Brahms' sublime Ein Deutsches Requiem in Verizon Hall, a program that I would catch the following night. Then on Sunday afternoon, Chestnut Hiller Ignat Solzhenitsyn led the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia in an all-Mozart program in the Perelman that brought the ensemble back to its original core repertoire of music composed during the baroque and classical styles of the 18th century.

Solzhenitsyn framed Sunday afternoon's concert with the two symphonies Mozart composed in the key of G minor: Symphony No. 25, K. 183, and Symphony No. 40, K. 550. In both scores, he made powerful claims for chamber orchestras being the sole proprietors of this truly classical repertoire as well as for the music of the 18th century being the most appropriate for this particular chamber orchestra.

Solzhenitsyn caught the spirited character of the opening Allegro con brio of the Symphony No. 25 right from the very first measure. The playing was crisp and the tempo was brisk -- until the oboe of Geoffrey Deemer suddenly broke out into a sweetly lyrical line that perfectly countered the vivacity of what had gone before. But even here, with the pace seeming much slower, Solzhenitsyn maintained an excellent sense of forward drive that continued to the closing double bar.

Symphony No. 40 remains my favorite of all Mozart's efforts in this form, and I found Solzhenitsyn's interpretation and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia's rendition of it to be among the most stellar I've ever heard. The music's demonic quality was flawlessly set up against its more melodious side, not just here and there but in constant flux from moment to moment.

In between the two symphonies, soprano Christine Brandes was heard in three arias, the third of which featured Solzhenitsyn playing the piano obligato with pose and sensitivity. While there are those who greatly admire Brandes' singing, I was not among them Sunday afternoon. Her voice is small and poorly projected, even in so intimate a venue as the Perelman Theater, and her tone was dry and unvaried regardless of the emotion of the text.

PIANO RECITAL

The Russian-born Yefim Bronfman played the kind of program one rarely hears these days, when up-and-coming virtuosi strive to dazzle more than enlighten and promote a cult of their own personality to disguise musical charlatanism rather than reveal the musical wonders of the solo piano repertoire. Through serious yet energetic renditions of music by Scarlatti, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Chopin, Bronfman proved himself a truly great technician as well as a thoughtful and distinctive interpreter without ever once abusing a gorgeous Steinway concert grand, the music of his audience.

Bronfman opened his recital with two harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti -- in C minor, KK 254, and D major, KK335 -- in readings that captured the charm of the first and the fire of the second. In both scores, he eschewed any attempt to recreate the sound of the originally intended instrument's percussive, plucked timbre. Instead, he made the most of the myriad colors a modern piano can produce, offering a limpid legato for the Sonata in C minor that was effectively contrasted by the shimmering brilliance he conjured up for the Sonata in D major.

Bronfman followed the Scarlatti with two works by Robert Schumann, one extremely well known and the other only rarely encountered in concert halls nowadays. Very few piano students who have gotten past the beginner level don't learn the Arabeske in C major, Opus 18, at one point or another, but during my five years at Peabody Conservatory of Music and nearly 30 years of reviewing concerts I've only heard two or three performances of his Humoreske in B-flat major, Opus 20.

That Bronfman captured the lyrical sweetness and tremulous glow of the former came as no surprise after having heard him play the first of the two Scarlatti sonatas -- his legato was seamless, his voicing polyphonic and his phrasing unaffected -- but I was awed by his success with the Humoreske.

After so much exquisite piano playing, one hadn't the right to expect an even more stunning rendition of Sergei Prokofiev's magnificent Piano Sonata No. 7 in B-flat major, Opus 83. Thirty years ago and more, it was all the rage. Any pianist with the fingers to play it programmed it as often as possible. And then, about 20 years ago or so, it disappeared -- and much to all our loss because it's a marvelous piece of piano music that uses the instrument's capabilities to capture within its three-movement form a whole world of intellectual, emotional and spiritual experiences. It's both brutal and beautiful -- and Bronfman played it with a level of technical polish alongside musical ferocity the likes of which only a true virtuoso and profound musician could even conceive let alone achieve.

'GERMAN REQUIEM'

The Philadelphia Orchestra has had a long tradition of giving excellent performances of Johannes Brahms' A German Requiem. Saturday evening's reading under Christoph Eschenbach's baton, with the Philadelphia Singers Chorale, soprano Michaela Kaune and baritone Christopher Maltman, had many memorable moments but ultimately failed to take its place among the finest readings I've heard of the score.

A Lutheran from northern Germany rather than a Roman Catholic from the Vienna in which he lived his adult life, Brahms probably never seriously considered writing a "Requiem Mass" according to the traditional Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. Instead, he chose to create a seven-movement work for chorus, orchestra and soloists based upon Biblical texts of his own choosing and in Luther's own German translation of the Bible.

The result is one of the most personal and, therefore, moving pieces of music meant to give comfort and reassurance to those who still reside here on earth regarding the fate of those who have died but who have aspired through faith to life eternal in Heaven. In music that never shouts but, rather, caresses the ear with sweet melodies, gentle harmonies and sonorous textures, Brahms' masterpiece achieves a triumph of joy over sorrow that is unique in the sacred choral repertoire.

Music of such sublime quality demands quite a lot from performers. The Philadelphia Orchestra played and the Philadelphia Singers Chorale sang with lustrous beauty Saturday night, but I often found Eschenbach's conducting more interruptive than inspiring. On more than a few occasions, I found myself wishing that he would simply get out of the way of the music and the musicians and let the former invigorate the latter without his unnecessary interventions of fussy phrasing, broken rhythmic drive, and cumulative consummation. Interestingly, I thought that soprano Kaune faltered because she followed Eschenbach's approach while baritone Maltman succeeded because he listened to his own muse and sang freely and dramatically.