Sweet Sweep, Not Nuance for Mozart and the Other Haydn

Conductor Ami Porat closed the 16th season of his Mozart Classical Orchestra with a polished and energetic program of Mozart and Michael Haydn on Sunday at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach.

Porat’s Mozart had sweep, discipline, richness and variety in phrasing and color. It was light on nuance and charm, however, and occasionally, as in the Symphony No. 24, K. 182, Porat so dotted every “i” and crossed every “t” that the result was briefly overly cautious, squarish and blocky.

Still, the performances had style and momentum.

Roger Wilkie, concertmaster emeritus of the orchestra, among his other leading positions around the Southland, was the soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto in A, K. 219. Wilkie shared with Porat a faith in warmth, sweetness and singing line, jettisoning any effort to recreate scrawny period practice.

Their romantic approach had its own full rewards, with passages seamlessly passed between soloist and orchestra. Wilkie also played Joachim’s intricate cadenzas in the first two movements and his own in the last.

The orchestra played with crispness and clarity, although again, at times, it sounded over-conducted. It was sunny but contained. For all that, Porat showed the concerto to have intelligent design, intricate and dense in detail. That was a useful counter approach to presenting Mozart as a naive, unconscious songbird.

Sophisticated Work but Still Unfamiliar

The surprise find of the program came at the close, with Michael Haydn’s rarely played Symphony in G, Perger 16.

Brother of the illustrious Franz Joseph, Michael was undervalued by most of his contemporaries but greatly esteemed by Mozart, who wrote a serious and grand slow introduction to this work and also two duets for violin and viola to complete a commission put at risk when Michael became sick.

The symphony, as enlarged by Mozart, showed the lesser Haydn to be capable of writing a joyous and sophisticated work, not only in the spirited outer movements, but also in the dreamy andante melodies played (in order) by the flute (Teri Mason), bassoon (Peter Mandell) and oboe (Price Kent).

The normally fine ensemble turned ragged at its rhythmically complicated end, however, taking the audience by surprise. “That’s it,” Porat said, to signal the work’s conclusion. He then came back to lead the finale again, this time ending with pert unity that elicited the wonted applause.