Review: Concert director’s playing stands out in night of Mozart & Salieri

Mozart & Salieri, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, directed by Vesa-Matti Leppänen with Robert Orr (oboe), Philip Arkinstall (clarinet), Justin Sun (bassoon) and Samuel Jacobs (horn). Music by Haydn, Mozart, Salieri and Hummel. Michael Fowler Centre, March 10. Reviewed by Max Rashbrooke.

So-called historical drama has many crimes to its name, one of which – perpetrated by the Oscar-winning film Amadeus – is to have painted Antonio Salieri as a kind of vengeful hack, intent on kneecapping Mozart’s career. In point of fact their relationship was far more complex than that – and so was Salieri’s music.

This was evident in Friday night’s concert, one of the keystones of which was Salieri’s 26 Variations on La Folia di Spagna. It’s a delightful, multi-faceted work that at times sounds like it could have been written a century earlier, in Vivaldi’s era, while at other times appearing – as director Vesa-Matti Leppänen pointed out – strikingly modern, almost minimalistic.

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A beautiful array of textures were on display from a stripped-back and standing NZSO, including some shimmering harp-work and a variation for mournful trombone. Leppänen’s sensitive playing also stood out, his last solo in particular both plain and plaintive.

After such delights, it felt like a step down to finish the concert on another, lesser set of variations, this time by Johann Nepomuk Hummel. The Eight Variations and Coda on O Du Lieber Augustin were charming and, thanks to the famous lilting theme, easy for the audience to hum, but also a touch repetitive and more limited in their ambition.

Similarly pleasant if undemanding was the opening piece, the Overture to Haydn’s opera L’infedelta Delusa. The NZSO’s playing was sparkling and mostly well-balanced, although the woodwind sound didn’t seem properly integrated, appearing to occupy a slightly different soundscape.

Fortunately the first half had a work to match Salieri’s superb variations: Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E-Flat Major for Four Winds (as opposed to the identically titled piece in the same key for violin and viola). Assuming the work is indeed by Mr Wolfgang Amadeus (there is some dispute on this point), it is him at his most reflective and inwards-looking, the first two movements in particular seeming to sit gently, immersed in memory and nostalgia.

The playing throughout was beautifully balanced and harmonious, and the four soloists all excelled, oboist Robert Orr and horn player Samuel Jacobs coping admirably with some demanding writing. The attentive audience, though confined to the Michael Fowler Centre’s lower tiers, were warm in their applause.