Mozartean Players Supply Grit, Surprise

After a number of seasons, Chamber Music in Historic Sites cannot be expected to

surprise with each outing. The Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College, which sponsors the series, has presented the Mozartean Players several times, and it also has found previous use for the Petit Trianon. And yet Sunday afternoon the opening of the Sites season was an occasion that only this venturesome series can produce.

The space--a little bit of Versailles tucked in among the Craftsman architecture in the Oak Knoll neighborhood of Pasadena--would probably continue to astonish even if concerts were performed in it every week. And to hear a trio of period instruments (Steven Lubin, fortepiano; Stanley Ritche, classical violin; Myron Lutzke, classical cello) is not so much to step back into history as to have Mozart step right up into our world.

The room is not unlike one that Mozart might have played in when he appeared before French royalty as a boy. A hundred of us were squeezed into it, with the musicians under our noses. In the 17th century the French might have been able to open the windows but, overdressed, would have sweltered like us anyway. There was no remove between musician and listener, no distance to glamorize sight or sound.

The sweat and labor of the players, dressed in formal tails, was part of the concert experience. The early instruments displayed a kaleidoscope of vivid colors. But one heard everything else as well, the scrape of the bow on strings, the sinking intonation of the fortepiano in the heat. This was Mozart not glorified but with all the grit in place.

The program, all Mozart, included two late and substantial piano trios (K. 502 and 542), an early violin sonata (K. 304) and the 12 piano variations on “Ah, vous dirai-je maman” (“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to us).

The Mozartean Players have a grim determination in all that they do, and Lubin could have found more room for sparkle in his rigorous performance of the variations. But the B-flat Trio (K. 502) played faster and more forcefully than on the group’s Harmonia Mundi recording of it, was a Mozart of the real world not of fine porcelain. And, ironically, it took an unreal space (at least for Pasadena) to bring the world’s most idealized composer down to earth.