It’s been two years since I last heard Mitsuko Uchida dish up a serving of mellifluous Mozart that she tenders phrase by phrase, with nuances of pure poetry. https://arioso7.wordpress.com/2022/03/28/mitsuko-uchida-and-mozart/
3/24/2024 Performance at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, California
The pianist’s runs, so well-shaped, curvaceous, and keenly melodic, afford a model for students of the piano, teachers, and listeners alike. In a concerto framing, she invites her audience to sample a panoply of characters whose colorful voices interact with the ensemble she coaxes from the piano.
The only caveat for me, surrounds the size of the Mahler chamber orchestra that is a steady companion to Uchida’s concerto forays. It’s quite large, and at times drowned out the pianist’s passage work. In the opening Concerto, No. 17, K. 453 in G which the Program Notes states, is one where the composer “had so successfully integrated orchestra and soloist, using modest resources, (“remember the work was written for home performance.”)
The Mahler group came with 15 first and second violins; 5 violas, 3 Double basses, 4 cellos, and a wind section: one flute, 2 oboes, two clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, and one tympany for K. 482.
Uchida, with her back to the audience, acting as director, was swarmed on either side of the piano by the strings with their lush, emphatic sound that seemed more suited to rendering Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, or the towering “Jupiter,” No. 41. At first I thought perhaps, the large size Zellerbach Concert Hall had some acoustical design issues that factored into periodic imbalances between the piano and chamber group, but I trusted my musical intuition that the “orchestra” needed to be sized down to allow Uchida her celebrated, audible breadth of emotional expression.
In a five year old recording of K. 453 (first movement-Allegro) showcased on you tube, Uchida achieves a pleasing balance between piano and orchestra. (Without doubt, Recording engineers are always advantageous–well placed mics included.) Note the pianist plays the opening theme with a detached alberti bass (broken chord), giving it a more playful intro just as she did at Zellerbach. (Glenn Gould might have done the same.) Most pianists play these figures legato–“connected,” in support of a singable treble melody, but there’s always room for creative individuality.
The Eb Concerto, No. 22, K. 482, earned a more traditional reading with broken chord figures in the bass being played legato-though sudden sound bursts of the tympanist intruded upon a lovely synthesis the pianist and orchestra had attained. Notwithstanding that particular distraction, things settled down when string players attached mutes to their bridges (indicated by Mozart) affording an ambrosian, “minor mode” interlude in the middle movement.
As a string player myself, (violinist) who played in a smaller size ensemble at the NYC High School of Performing Arts, at the Winter Concerto Concert, I had the challenge of stepping out of our small chamber group and into the soloist role after Intermission. (Ironically, it was Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 17, K. 453, Allegro movement, that I had auditioned for Nadia Reisenberg) Murray Perahia, a ” P.A.” (Performing Arts High) classmate, had been awarded the Beethoven Bb Concerto, no. 2 (first movement), the year before, with its wealth of Mozartean-like lines that he’d beautifully spun.
Perahia and Uchida, kindred “poets” of the piano, turned out to be protagonists in you tube footage that memorializes their participation in the 1972 Leeds International Pianoforte Competition. While Perahia prevailed, Uchida came back to Leeds in 1975 and placed Second.
In closing, I snatched some scenes from Uchida’s Zellerbach appearance, 3/24, allowing myself the fun of adding my own track of K. 545 through the slide show. Unfortunately, recording the performer “LIVE” was verboten.
Arioso7's Blog (Shirley Kirsten) 