Virtuosi Keep Mozart-Heavy Program Afloat

The team of Vladimir Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi is a rare species, having managed to stay together for 21 years. In a time when maestros are addicted to the game of musical chairs, that’s a statistical freak. And even after assuming the podium of the Russian National Orchestra last September, Spivakov still takes his chamber orchestra out on tour.

Nor did Spivakov make it easy on himself or his players, choosing to fill the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with a triple-layer Mozart sandwich around a Schnittke core Saturday night (an unofficial prelude to the L.A. Philharmonic’s April “Mozart And Friends” festival).

Yet exasperated survivors of easy-listening Mozart snoozefests could let down their guards, for these musicians could make Mozart speak without pedantic period-instrument rigidity, nor flaccid phrasing that polishes the life out of the music. Rather, they played Mozart fleetly, with pointed accents, with a fluid elegance that nevertheless managed to dig down inside the notes to a remarkable degree. In the Violin Concerto No. 5, Spivakov handled the violin himself with an aristocratic air while also finding some skittering, amusing things to say--and with baton in hand, he made dashing trips through the Symphonies Nos. 24 and 29.

In all three Mozart works, Spivakov proceeded from one movement to the next virtually without pause. As a result, Schnittke’s Sonata for Violin and Chamber Orchestra--where a jangling harpsichord, the composer’s antic spirit and occasional lyrical bent relieve the edge of his tough dissonances--assumed the position of a derisive scherzo within the context of a four-movement Mozart super-symphony. This actually made perverse sense, and Spivakov was a changed violinist in Schnittke, full of vinegar and bite.