Mainly Mozart Festival Continues

Charlene Baldridge
Photo by Ken Howard

Mainly Mozart Festival Continues

We’re deep into the Mainly Mozart Festival season right now, and having attended the “conductor-less” performance June 8 (longtime concertmaster William Preucil led the Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra from the violin) I can assure you it was magnificent; that is, if one overlooks the annoyance of applause between movements.

Regular Mainly Mozart audiences are sophisticated, so this interruption seldom occurs during performances in other series, but the orchestra series is held at the Balboa Theatre and there are lots of seats to fill, so they offer deeply discounted tickets through some of the ticket outlets, thinking to serve those who could not otherwise attend or those not inured to chamber music and its customs. Irritating as this can be, I’d rather have them there applauding between movements than not there at all.

William Preucil, concertmaster

Wednesday’s concert was well attended and afforded the opportunity to hear more music from Mozart, (Symphony No. 25 in G minor, written at 17), Franz Joseph Haydn (Symphony No. 39, also in G minor), and Felix Mendelssohn (Concerto for Violin and Piano in D minor, written at 13).

Esteemed and powerful pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, long a fixture at Mainly Mozart and curator of the Mainly Mozart Spotlight Series, performed solo duties in the Mendelssohn along with Preucil, who possesses a ravishingly beautiful sound. He was seated adjacent to her and in front of the 59-member chamber orchestra, top rank players gathered from around the country. The idea that something so fine could be achieved without the customary arm waving is edifying to say the least.

Maestro Michael Francis

We returned Saturday, June 11, for the juxtaposition of Mozart (Divertimento No. 4 in B-flat Major and the Mass in C minor “Orphanage,” written when Mozart was 12!) with another composer who was also a prodigy, Camille Saint-Saens (Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor). Soloist was Adam Neiman, one of my favorite pianists among those presented since Mainly Mozart’s inception 28 years ago. The program was conducted by Michael Francis, in his second year as music director of the Mainly Mozart Festival. Francis and Neiman provided a lively pre-concert talk about prodigy as it applies to Mozart and Saint-Saens, who played his first concert at age 10. The lecture was made especially interesting by the fact that Neiman, too, was a piano prodigy who began lessons at 5 ½ and by age 10 was performing 50 engagements a year. As a boy he loved Debussy and was also influenced by lying under the piano as his mother, a professional pianist, practiced Prokofiev’s 2^nd Piano Concerto. Nonetheless, Neiman said that Mozart is his first and truest love.

Adam Neiman

Neiman received a standing ovation for his dazzling, intelligent performance of Saint-Saens’ fierce, intense concerto. He rewarded the audience with Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude in D-flat Major, a perfect way to return us to earth.

San Diego Master Chorale was featured in the Mass in C minor, which is awe-inspiring aside from the fact that Mozart was only 12 when it was written. His genius for vocal writing was already evident, especially in the duets for soprano (Yetzabel Arias) and mezzo-soprano (Kara Sainz). The other soloists were tenor Steven Soph and baritone Lee Poulis. They were not a hugely distinguished lot, but adequate to the task.

This marks the first year of Maestro Francis’s six-year exploration of Mozart’s prodigy. As we move through the six years, the works will become more mature. Asked what would come after the six yeas are traversed, he remarked, “Perhaps we’ll love it so much we’ll do it all over again.”

So far so good.

The Other Mozart

June 12 the Mainly Mozart Festival presented The Other Mozart, a one-woman play written and performed by actor, playwright and producer Sylvia Milo. It’s about Maria Anna (Marianne), Mozart’s slightly older sister, nicknamed Nannerl. Both before and after its 2012 New York premiere off-off Broadway, the work toured. It has garnered ecstatic reviews from The New York Times and others. The site of the New York production, the Here complex, has numerous venues, the largest of which, at least so far as I can determine, seats 150 theatregoers. The Balboa Theatre seats 1,339. The performance here was a case of mismatched venue and vehicle. But the Balboa is what Mainly Mozart has to offer.

Sylvia Milo as the other Mozart

My experience of spoken word in the Balboa, even amplified, leads me to believe the venue diffuses the sound (as in the recent Mainly Mozart performance of Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne) and renders it well nigh unintelligible. Though gently miked, Milo’s voice and intelligibility quotient (perhaps 50 percent) was additionally compromised by constant background music (billed as by the Mozarts – I’m unaware that any of Nannerl’s music survives – and contemporary composers Nathan Davis and Phyllis Chen), and the actor’s dialing down of vocal volume for dramatic effect. Thus, my enjoyment of The Other Mozart was severely hampered and despite the darkness I wanted nothing more than a copy of the script.

As opposed to the recent, entirely fictional French film Mozart's Sister, Milo constructed her play from research, mainly surviving letters from Mozart to his sister (“Nobody saved my letters,” she says plaintively) and newspaper accounts of the road trips Nannerl and her brother Wolfie (Wolfgang) took, showcased by their father Leopold. It was hoped that Wolfgang would eventually secure a court position remunerative enough that it would support the family, something Leopold had been unable to do.

Nannerl, whose keyboard skills were said to exceed her brother’s, was on the road only until she hit marriageable age, and then, due to the mores of the times, she stayed home learning the arts that would sustain her as a wife and mother, which indeed she became. Her gravestone identifies her as the sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The dancer-like Milo performs in her chemise upon an immense period dress that is the only set piece. It is full of numerous pockets from which she draws prop letters, a toy piano, teacups, and other accouterments that assist in the poignant storytelling. The climax of the play occurs when she puts the dress on and is unable to move – a metaphor in itself. The concept is brilliant, as created by the Little Matchstick Factory and directed by Isaac Bryne.

Someone asked me recently if the real W.A. Mozart was as frivolous and annoying as the one limned by Peter Shaffer in his 1980 Broadway play, Amadeus. The idea is suggested in part by Mozart’s letters home. I said I thought not; that was just Shaffer’s device to underscore Salieri’s amazement that such divine music could come from so asinine a human. (In reality the two composers hardly knew one another.) My theory that Mozart was not so extreme, that his more puerile character attributes were created for dramatic effect, has been supported by scholars and by the New York Times obituary of Shaffer, who died last week at 90.

First Folio Activities

On a theatrical note, I ventured to the Main Library Monday night to hear Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein  and guest director Brian Kulick of the Classic Stage Company in New York deliver a talk titled "Shakespeare on the American Stage: The Director and the Text." Kulick talked about his production of Macbeth, which opens in previews on the Lowell Davis Festival Stage at the Old Globe this week. The production is set in the aftermath of WWI and offers numerous other surprises.

Saturday, June 18 from 10am to 1:30pm is 

Globe Family Day, a free event at Copley Plaza, which includes music, crafts and storytelling for Shakespeare fans of all ages. No tickets or reservations required. Included are tours (ages 9 and up) and for the even younger kids, a free program (tickets required) titled "Have Fun With Hamlet" at 10:30am in Hattox Hall. Go to FirstFolioSanDiego2016.org or phone (619) 23-GLOBE.

Shakespeare's First Folio is on display at the Central Library through July 7. San Diego is the only location in California at which the exhibit may be seen. It is free. Timed tickets are required. Make reservations at the above web site.