Mozart Spiritual Depth Still Eludes Many

Mythologist par excellence Joseph Campbell spent most of his life peering behind “the Masks of God,” his phrase for spiritual truths common throughout the world’s peoples, places and ages. Where Campbell occupied himself trying to spot earthly manifestations of the divine spark, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart spent his 35 years creating them.

At least, that’s the way I feel when I hear his music played correctly. This being the year of the Mozart Bicentennial, we’re being deluged by his music in a way that probably won’t be heard again for another, oh, 100 years, or the next music-industry marketing campaign, whichever comes first.

In Orange County alone, we’ve heard four of his piano concertos in recent weeks, more than we usually get in as many years.

First, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra enlisted pianist Barry Douglas in the Concerto No. 25. Then, last week, it was possible to hear No. 20 by Steven Lubin and the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg, No. 27 via Andre-Michel Schub and the Pacific Symphony, and the often-overlooked No. 22 from Jeffrey Kahane and, again, the LACO.

It’s generally agreed that the concertos best span the breadth and depth of Mozart’s talents, so this spate of them has been particularly good for comparing and contrasting the ways he’s being treated now, 200 years after his body was dumped into an unmarked grave.

When performed by musicians with talent and vision, Mozart’s music conveys a feeling of constant renewal and inspiration that makes me want to weep at the privilege of belonging to the species that produced its sublime pleasures. I happened upon one such performance last year, in Salzburg during the annual Mozart birthday celebration, where I heard the Camerata Academica of the Mozarteum play Concerto No. 17.

But when that music falls into less-abundantly skilled hands, I want just to weep. In three of those four concerts in Orange County, I found myself close to those tears.

Surprisingly, the one that came closest to my memories of Salzburg wasn’t the one by the Camerata Academica’s sibling group from Mozart’s birthplace, the 150-year-old Mozarteum Orchestra.

With pianist Lubin, the ensemble merely tiptoed across the drama of the great D-minor concerto last week. Instead of communicating feelings of existential despair, or tragic sadness, the polite but sterile performance dug only as deep into human Angst as mild heartburn. God, apparently, was otherwise engaged that day.

The Pacific Symphony concert that included the Concerto No. 27 disappointed me for a different reason. In other hands, the final movement of this concerto has inspired feelings in me of unfettered joy, of gliding weightless above all earthly concern.

Under the baton of guest conductor Christopher Seaman, violinists dragged bows unsympathetically across strings, and pianist Schub countered with a conflicting sense of tempo and willful phrasing. The mental picture I got was that of Marines plodding across a murky swamp before stepping--sklurch!--into a bog.

Barry Douglas went even further in trying, it seemed, to wrestle the regal Concerto No. 25 into submission a couple of weeks back. Attacking the piano with an overwrought emotionalism and bravado that might work in some Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff, Douglas simply steamrolled over the ethereal delights of Mozart.

Because his music is less obviously demanding, technically, than much of that written before or since, it often seems that you need a musical Joseph Campbell to peel back the pretty surface layers, to reveal the profound emotions underneath. The music is so exposed that musicians who are anything less than first rate can find no place to hide.

That’s one reason I can usually tell within the first 10 bars of a Mozart piece whether I’m in for a trip the heavens, or just another stint in the waiting room of musical purgatory. In that all-too-rare moment of mutually inspired communication among conductor, soloist and orchestra, all masks are lifted away; human faces disappear, revealing the the spirit behind the music in all its naked magnificence.

Fortunately, just as I was beginning to think that such an epiphany was exclusive to performances by, of and for the people of Salzburg, Kahane and the L.A. Chamber Orchestra came to town.

Thanks to the sensitive and imaginative leadership of incoming music director Christof Perick, the LACO brought to Mozart what had been missing in the other three performances: iron-clad musical precision, vibrant playing and an intelligent, utterly selfless concept of the work.

It made me think that pianists (and orchestras, for that matter) can fall into one of three basic Mozart camps:

First are those who make you think: “What a musician!”

Next up the ladder are those who set self aside and let the listener realize: “What a composer!”

At the highest plateau are those in which composer and performer merge to make you feel: “What a universe!”

It would be nice to think, two centuries down the line, that’s what Mozart had in mind all along.