Stormy Mozart & Sunny Brahms

Mozart is often associated in my mind with beautiful melodic lines, endlessly unexpected but perfectly appropriate chord structure. He would be the last person in the world one expects to write solemn formal baroque style music with its almost mechanically symmetric counterpoints. Therefore it came as a great shock to me discover another Mozart Saturday night at the Cultural Centre when I listened to the rather forceful, insistent opening lines of his Adagio and Fugue in C minor K546 played by the versatile HKPO under the baton of its guest conductor Douglas Boyd.

According to the Programme Notes, Mozart was immediately fascinated by Bach's music which he heard it for the first time when brought to his attention by one Baron van Swieten upon his first arrival in Vienna in 1873. Like the kind of spontaneous composer that he was, he lost no time in writing Adagio and Fugue in C minor. It has a very forceful, confident and rather solemn opening lines which was periodically repeated but it was mixed with a softer and more melodic and a bit sad subject. The main theme was quickly taken up by the cellos and basses, followed by the violas, second violins and then the first violin and like baroque music, each continued to pursue their own individual lines and would from time to time return in with the main motif. The result is the very complex yet well blended joining and separation of four independent line of melodies in the formal fugue structure that we hear today.

The next piece of the evening was the seldom heard Piano Concerto No.24 in C minor by Mozart, in Allegro Larghetto and Allegretto, played this time by Scottish piano soloist Stephen Osborne, who we are told studied music first in Edinburgh and then in Manchester and has since played with various orchestras in London, Japan, Germany and Australia and numerous awards by Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, International Record Review etc. He had recorded Rachmaninoff's 24 Preludes, Debussy's Preludes, Liszt's Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses and solos by Kapustin and also those of Tipppett.  It was written on 24th March, 1786 and premiered a week later, being one of the 14 he wrote feverishly for money shortly after his arrival in Vienna because he got married in 1782 and a son was born to him two years later. Musicologists have discovered many inconsistencies in the hand-written manuscripts because it was written in such a hurry amidst teaching music in the morning and concert performance in the evening. Being the genius that he was, it was still excellent. It has a rather sad theme in the first, introduced first by the strings and which varied endlessly between weakness and strength, melancholy and courage; a more gentle, lyrical, leisurely and at places heavenly theme in second and a rather light-hearted and joyous and forceful  third movement in which the main theme underwent eight variations by piano, wind and other sections of the orchestra.

Then there is a reversal in the second half of the programme. We got Brahms, whose music we are accustomed to think of as a bit moody, brooding and sad. Instead we had performed for us another piece seldom heard in Hong Kong, his Serenade No.1 in D. It was the first time I heard it. It completely modified my view of his music. It was a piece he wrote in Detmold where he got a job as piano teacher to Princess Frederike in 1857 and the conductor of the city's choral society, shorlty after his three-year stay with the Schumanns after Robert Schumann tried to take his own life . According to the Programme Notes, it was originally written as a Nonet for wind and strings and was first performed in 1858. It was then re-written for a small orchestra and performed in 1859 and then rewritten for the third time for a full orchestra and was successfully premiered in 1869 in Hanover. The piece has a very happy countryside feel to it with its almost march-like rhythm, confident strings, high flute, clarinet and horn theme interspersed with gentle song like melodies amidst with occasional boisterous rustic dances and the romping rhythms of a galloping rondo theme in the final hunting scene which concludes the 6 movement piece in Allegro molto, Scherzo (Allegro non troppo, Adagio non troppo, Meuneutto I & II, Schergo (Allegro) and Rondo (Allegro).\

Douglas Boyd appeared in an all black informal suit and jacket, conducted with gusto and  plenty of swift but forceful movements upon an almost permanently raised arch formed by his shoulders and forearms and the HKPO responded wonderfully to his conducting. Stephen Osborne also appeared in an all-black outfit and played rather flowingly but with a kind restrained power. It was another very pleasant Saturday evening at the Cultural Centre. My only regret was that the concert hall was much less than full than some of my other more recent concerts. I can't help but feel a little sorry for those who missed it. It was a wonderful concert.