Salzburg Chamber Soloists deliver spirited Mozart: REVIEW CONCERT
By Sarah Bryan Miller
POST-DISPATCH CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC
02/26/2006
You never know what you're going to get with the University of Missouri at St. Louis' Premiere Performances series: The quality of their imported artists, while generally good, is uneven. But the news was all excellent on Friday night at the Touhill Performing Arts Center when the touring Salzburg Chamber Soloists performed three works by the birthday boy of the year, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The Chamber Soloists are a string orchestra with a very youthful, very international membership. They wore traditional concert dress, except for their leader, Lavard Skou-Larsen, who came on with a rumpled knit shirt under his tailcoat. It may have been intended to set him apart or to convey attitude; it just looked sloppy.
Happily, that didn't carry over to the program. The music-making itself was the antithesis of sloppiness: It was crisp, accurate and spirited.
The program opened with the familiar Divertimento in D-major, K. 136, the "First Salzburg Symphony." Listed under the string quartets, it demands exceptional technical ability when taken quickly, and it was taken very quickly here. The Chamber Soloists may have broken the land speed record for playing it - particularly in the final Presto movement - with their exceptionally zippy reading, but it was remarkably clean throughout.
They gave the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in C major, No. 13, K. 415, a bright and likable reading. They were joined by the fine German-born pianist Andreas Klein, who offered thoughtful and idiomatic playing, technical chops and a good sense of collaboration with the orchestra. Klein had some minor issues in the opening Allegro movement when his fingerwork turned momentarily sloppy, but he quickly cleaned it up. Overall, it was a delight.
The second half of the concert was given over to the Quintet for Strings in G minor, K. 516, arranged for string orchestra. Some of the violins traded sides between first and second; the sound remained clean throughout. This is a darker work, written during Mozart's father's last illness and death, and the Chamber Soloists thoughtfully brought out its various moods, with shafts of light piercing the sadness.
Skou-Larsen, who leads his forces from the concertmaster's chair, is an intense musician. The ensemble is tightly disciplined, playing with remarkable clarity and unity of sound. The Touhill's Anheuser-Busch Auditorium proved a good acoustical setting for them.
