Fortepiano Makes Night for Haydn

The program was divided evenly between the music of Haydn and Mozart, the fathers of Viennese classicism. But Tuesday belonged to Haydn. It was the second of three programs by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra led expertly by Nicholas McGegan at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church.

Credit the bounding enthusiasm and sheer creativity of the composer, whose works are scarcely heard enough live, especially locally. McGegan conducted the Overture in D and the Symphony No. 53, whose problematic construction Elisabeth Le Guin detailed in excellent program notes.

Both little-played works, they are full of optimism and invention. Of course, both require the crackerjack ensemble playing that the Philharmonia Baroque regularly delivers. And it doesn’t hurt to have the interpretive, high-spirited vigilance of McGegan, whose conducting is always engaging and instructive to watch.

For the record, he took both repeats in the first movement of the symphony. During one of these, timpanist Todd Manley inadvertently threw a stick into the air and had to retrieve it from the front of the stage. McGegan and the musicians weren’t distracted.

The issue with Mozart is strictly one of personal taste--on the use of a fortepiano in the Concerto in B-flat, K. 595, and the Rondo in A, K. 386. Malcolm Bilson was the fluent and sensitive soloist. He played an instrument built last year by Chris Maene in Belgium, modeled after a 1745 Anton Walter.

To accommodate the Lilliputian dynamics of the instrument, McGegan used the full orchestra only in the big, recurring passages, in which Bilson also played. Otherwise, he scaled back accompaniment. This resulted in pleasing chamber-like intimacy and transparency.

But at a cost. There was no getting around, at least for one listener, the narrow expressive range of the instrument, caused largely by its lack of sustaining power and resonance. Within the possible limits, Bilson created shades of color and dynamic, but it wasn’t enough, especially when compared with the emotional depths so familiar from interpretations on modern pianos.

Some will argue that is how Mozart heard and envisioned the work because this was the instrument available to him. This is an ironic argument. Mozart’s use of a fortepiano instead of a harpsichord was progressive in his day and represented his faith in a comparatively new and unperfected technology, as did his incorporation in the later scores of that new and not always available instrument, the clarinet.

Juxtaposing such a keyboard instrument with an orchestral ensemble made up of period instruments or replicas, as is the Philharmonia Baroque, may give a snapshot of a historical occasion. But it also points out the problem. The other instruments were at a peak of development; next to them, the fortepiano sounds naive and inadequate. The music is ready to burst its bounds, and in time, of course, this is just what happened as the keyboard instrument developed.

It is interesting to hear the liabilities under which Mozart labored. Certainly Bilson makes a stronger case for the instrument than do some of his colleagues. But it still sounded like diminished Mozart.

The final concert in the San Francisco-based orchestra’s short series at the church will be Feb. 17.