MUSIC REVIEW : Mozart Plays the Orpheum

A little satiety-- eine kleine Overdose , an Austrian might say--ought to be infecting even the most addicted concertgoer by now. Five months into the Mozart year, we might start to grow tired of, say, the oft-heard Requiem or the ubiquitous Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola.

In fact, that hasn’t happened. The Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364, for instance, turned up again Thursday night on a concert sponsored by the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College, and sounding better and more lovable than ever.

The performers and the auditorium had something--a lot--to do with that. The Vienna Chamber Orchestra, led by its music director, Philippe Entremont, and appearing on the Chamber Music in Historical Sites series in the wonderful, old, acoustically grand Orpheum Theater downtown, achieved wonders in the familiar work.

This performance of the well-worn double concerto was apparently accomplished without the agency of superegos. That was clear enough in the pristine dynamic scheme produced by the orchestra, not only in accompaniments to the concertos--the other one being the one for piano, in F, K. 413--but also in a thrilling, witty and articulate performance of the Symphony No. 33.

While it may be a cliche to say that Mozart’s music is sublime, the reality is that one seldom hears it played that way. Getting to a place of unself-consciousness seems to be one of the harder career moves for most musicians. Making the composer’s identity more important than one’s own is a lifelong goal.

Last time we heard the Vienna ensemble, five years ago, Entremont and his band, then a decade old as a team, seemed far from that goal, though accomplished enough as touring chamber orchestras go. Thursday, they appeared to occupy a much higher plateau of achievement.

The strings, as heard in the grateful acoustic of the 2,200-seat, 65-year-old French Renaissance auditorium, echoed charmingly through the room, their resonance warm but never overstated. The wind players--oboes and horns only--showed off never, yet made pure and thrilling sounds, including some of the softest passages imaginable from those instruments. Understatement with authority should be the ensemble’s middle name.

It certainly describes the French conductor’s work. With one of the longer careers in the piano and conducting business already behind him, Entremont at 56 goes about that business with a quietness and modesty that disguise tremendous accomplishment.

His humor-filled, emotionally resonant and mechanically immaculate rendering of the Symphony No. 33 was just the capper on a superior evening. At its start, violinist Ola Rudner and violist Ilse Wincor were the perfectly matched and subtly articulate soloists in K. 364, producing a reading that actually seemed to find new and touching beauties in familiar ground.

At mid-program, Entremont became his own soloist in a reconsideration of the Concerto No. 11--the one that starts out sounding like “Se vuol’ ballare”--so strong that it probably made every pianist in the place want to rush home and play it.

Accomplished on an elegant Boesendorfer instrument, this performance became as elegant and aristocratic as any Mozart playing heard so far this year.

The Orpheum, by the way, turns out to be a cherishable, usable venue for serious listening, its usability weakened only by apparently primitive lighting facilities on the stage and in the house.