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Concert Review: A Night of Mozart / February 28, 2015

This review appeared in the 2015 Albuquerque Journal. Reprinted with kind permission. 

by D.S. Crafts

It is always heartening to see the talents of individual players of the New Mexico Philharmonic on display. And no more so than flutist Valerie Potter. Her beautiful, golden flute tones have long graced the top of the ensemble, and Saturday we were given opportunity to hear her interpretive skills in the Mozart Concerto for Flute No. 1. Robert Tweten conducted this all-Mozart program which also included the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro and the composer’s final symphony, No. 41, posthumously called “Jupiter.”

Before the concert began, another individual player, concertmaster Krzysztof Zimowski, received the Knight’s Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. The Consul General of Poland was to have presented it to him, but the blizzard Friday night prevented him from flying in from Los Angeles. Instead, he spoke to us on the overhead screen via Skype.

The Overture to The Marriage of Figaro makes an effective opening piece to any concert (not to mention the opera itself!), and Tweten led it with an exceptional sense of animation and verve.

Much has been made of Mozart’s comment to his father about hating the flute. Firstly, that may simply have been mitigation to his father’s accusations (unbelievably to us!) of laziness. And secondly, he was referring to the old wooden transverse flute, not the flute of today and certainly not in the hands of a master player such as Valerie Potter. After all, he did write an entire opera about a flute!  The Concerto No. 1 is Mozart’s only genuine concerto for flute (No. 2 having been originally written for oboe). While the concerto may not be one of the composer’s weightier works, it professes a grace and charm virtually unmatched by any of his contemporaries.

Potter and Tweten skillfully conjured Mozart’s gentle vein of irony that runs unmistakably through the opening Allegro. The Adagio, the emotional centerpiece of the concerto and its richest movement, brought some beautifully lyrical playing from Potter alternating with the dramatic interventions of the orchestra.  A leisurely tempo in the finale gave Potter ample opportunity to display not only the flute’s athletic agility but beautifully sculpted melodic lines.

There was an era when Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 was the most often played, but in recent times it seems to have been eclipsed by the “Jupiter” Symphony. Tweten led a rousing performance replete with the kind of dynamic contrast Beethoven would later expand and exploit. Seeking to keep the flow of the music and dynamic of the work a continuous whole, Tweten never “stepped out of the batter’s box” between movements, but took them almost as with an attacca indication.  He led a gracious Andante cantabile, with its often immediate juxtapositions of emotionally-wrought minor chords with light-hearted melody. The final movement, with its ubiquitous 4-note motif, has a fugal section that could easily have come straight out of Prokofiev. It always takes me by surprise even though I know full well it is coming. Yet bold and arresting as it is, it is still within the bounds of 18th century harmony and counterpoint.

Daniel Steven Crafts
www.dscrafts.net

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