Connecting with Mozart

It is not yet a Mozart year. The composer’s 250th birthday is not until Jan. 27. But because musicians read scores better than calendars, a Mozart glut -- recordings in record numbers, performances and more performances, festivals, books, DVDs, merchandizing tie-ins -- is already upon us.

The celebration will be a two-season affair, and we may be sick of Mozart when it is over. But then again, we may not. Our main Mozartean in this town will be the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, which will be performing all the piano concertos -- conducted from the keyboard by music director Jeffrey Kahane -- along with much else (even some Mozart jazz) over the next many months.

The orchestra began its 37th season over the weekend with a look at Mozart’s legacy in a program that included but a bit of the birthday boy, along with substantial portions of William Bolcom and Tchaikovsky. And if everything Mozartean continues to be as bracing as it was Sunday evening in UCLA’s Royce Hall, the good times have just begun.

The Mozart legacy is, obviously, a boundless theme. This composer cuts perhaps a broader swath through music history than any other. Mozart was Tchaikovsky’s favorite composer. He was also Schoenberg’s. And John Cage’s. You could easily fill a season with nothing but tributes written to Mozart over the years. And many more tributes are on the way.

Kahane began the evening with the composer’s overture to “La Clemenza di Tito.” It was Mozart’s last opera and may be underrated because it was written in an archaic opera-seria style. But underneath the stilted libretto and formal style are startling profundities about the human condition revealed through music of complexity and power. Kahane underscored dramatic intensity, so much so that I hope he conducts the opera someday.

In Bolcom’s “Orphee-Serenade,” which came next, the Mozart connection comes by way of a quick quote from the “Haffner” Serenade and a general nod in the direction of the Mozart serenades. But Bolcom is a multi-stylist, and the attraction of this sly serenade, written in 1984, is how Mozart’s style bumps up against that of Mussorgsky, Stravinsky (another big-time Mozart man), Milhaud, Ives (who thought Mozart “a sissy”) and others past and present.

The bumping is what’s best. This isn’t so much a collage of styles but an argument, with one kind of music continually interrupting another. The jokes are there, but so is a tougher sassiness. And Bolcom always gets the last word through a solo piano part. Kahane conducted from the keyboard -- and threw musical monkey wrenches -- with the necessary panache.

Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo” Variations romanticize an earlier century. The Russian composer goes back to Mozart’s time but doesn’t change his clothes, diet or language. Still, Sunday’s performance, in which cellist Alisa Weilerstein was soloist, was more Age of Enlightenment than most.

Kahane conducted with precision and a ready willingness to toy with Weilerstein’s kittenish spunkiness. She is 23, with a sumptuous tone and flawless technique. Her personality onstage seemed younger than her years. But she has the chops to do anything she wants with her instrument and the flair to make it all look like fun. When she matures, look out!

After intermission, Kahane conducted Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 4, which is also known as “Mozartiana.” Its four movements are orchestrations of Mozart’s keyboard music (and, in the third movement, of Liszt’s organ transcription of Mozart’s choral “Ave Verum Corpus”) but in Tchaikovsky-style -- he again doesn’t change his clothes or diet here, but he works at the language a bit.

For the first two movements, Kahane intercut the original piano pieces (a late gigue and minuet) with Tchaikovsky’s arrangements, which meant a continual jumping-up from the piano. It was a lively display of multi-tasking virtuosity that unraveled when he ultimately forgot whether he was pianist or conductor. No matter. The musical effect was hugely entertaining.

Moreover, Kahane’s getting lost made its own point. In the final theme and variations, Tchaikovsky loses himself in himself as he launches into an improvisatory-sounding mini violin concerto, which Margaret Batjer played richly. Then came a clarinet cadenza given a Gershwin-esque turn by Gary Gray.

But that is yet another worthy legacy that was on display Sunday. Mozart has a way of keeping everyone -- composers and performers -- on their toes.