Familiar Fare Gets Spicing Up

There are three schools of Viennese music. The first, in the late 18th and early 19th century, places Vienna dead center in hearts of classical music lovers--Mozart and Beethoven were part of it. The Hollywood Bowl feasts on it.

The second is less popular with modern audiences, since it contains the music by Schoenberg and his students, Berg and Webern, that pushed the limits of harmony and melody and helped shape the sounds of the 20th century. These are not composers generally welcome at outdoor summer concerts, but they hold little terror for the venturesome Ojai Festival, which concluded its 52nd annual weekend Sunday.

And then there is present-day Vienna’s little-known, irreverent third school, which sets out to unmake Viennese tradition with the influence of Kurt Weill and jazz and Satie and which seems perfect territory for Ojai.

But the final concert late Sunday afternoon, always a popular event and a great occasion for some musical proselytizing, remained unusually grounded in Vienna’s first school with a brief foray into the second. Mitsuko Uchida, this year’s music director, was the piano soloist in concertos by Mozart and Beethoven (composers who opened the festival Friday night). She was accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by David Zinman.

The audience was bountiful. When the box office ran out of tickets it kept selling more lawn space anyway. Core Ojai crowds are famous for fearlessness, but Mozart and Beethoven open floodgates. And this crowd was ecstatic.

One could, under these retrogressive circumstances, become a scold. But the idyllic setting of Libbey Bowl, perfect weather, a crowd of music enthusiasts and sensational performances combine to produce a compelling drug. Maybe there is more than one way to stretch minds.

Uchida has never been quite as effective a concert soloist as she is a recitalist. Music for her seems a private place. Alone onstage, she allows an audience into her inner sanctum, where every tiny detail is brought to life. But a concert is more a public gathering, a meeting between soloist and a mass of musicians governed by a leader. And Uchida, like a musical Joan of Arc, is held in sway by her own visions, not society’s.

She had with Zinman, however, the rare partner who could complement her. The performance of Mozart’s Concerto No. 12, K. 414, was lovely. Uchida is a spunky Mozartean, with a glittery pealing tone, but also a melter of hearts in long-lined slow movements. Zinman’s easy Mozartean poise set her up perfectly.

In the Beethoven, Uchida’s sparkle predominated. This is showy music, and Uchida is, for all her fussing with the details, a grand and showy pianist. No one is more fun to hear play arpeggios up and down the keyboard. But she also probes, and the slow movement went deep. Again Zinman was an advantage. He is an imaginative Beethoven conductor, who highlights feisty rhythms and who encourages a kind of spicy instrumental sound. He and Uchida seemed to egg each other on, which doesn’t happen very often in safe modern-day concerto performances.

Zinman also proved a highly sympathetic conductor of music for strings by Berg (Three Pieces from “Lyric Suite”) and Webern (Five Movements, Opus 10). This is complex music that he made immediately ingratiating, warmly phrased and luminously clear, the Philharmonic strings lush and clean.

Sunday morning was mainly Russian and serious, yet worked surprisingly well for a concert often treated as accompaniment to brunch. Mark Steinberg, the first violinist of the Brentano Quartet, joined pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn in Schubert’s Sonata in D and Prokofiev’s First Sonata. The Schubert was a last-minute replacement for the thorny Bartok’s Third Quartet (the Brentano cellist was not on hand). It was the Prokofiev, though, that left a strong, haunting impression. Rustling leaves, distant car horns, children on the bike path behind the shell all somehow connected this somber, dramatic music to life around us.

Shostakovich’s big Piano Quintet was also powerful. It is in Solzhenitsyn’s blood and powerful fingers, and the Brentano players were just as intense. For this there was a substitute cellist, Nina Maria Lee, who entered into the ensemble with spirit and exceptional flair.

Next year Esa-Pekka Salonen will be festival music director and the cheeky Toimii Ensemble, which promotes a Finnish equivalent of the third Vienna School, will be in residence. Ojai’s spirit prevails.