Charles Mackerras's concert with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra was not just a riveting musical experience; it was also an invigorating history lesson. Having played the first two movements of Mozart's Paris Symphony, Mackerras announced that he would also perform the alternative slow movement for the symphony. Mozart was asked to compose a new middle movement after the concert promoter in Paris found the original too complex for his audiences.
Hearing the two versions one after the other was a fascinating revelation of Mozart's musical flexibility. Where the original is a delicate and intimate dance, like a miniature operatic aria, the newer movement inhabits a world of courtly affectation, with its faster tempo and figuration. The change of movements effectively transforms the symphony. When it is performed with the original version, there is an expressive contrast between the outer movements and the middle one. With the later one, the symphony never moves out of the realm of grand public display.
Mozart plays with public taste and expectation in the first and last movements of the symphony, and Mackerras and the SCO re-created that sense of immediacy and excitement in their performances. The first movement is one of the most imposing Mozart ever wrote, with its exotic flourishes for two clarinets and grandiose orchestral writing. The last is a whirlwind of musical energy. At the time, Parisian audiences were amazed by the quiet opening to this finale, having expected a conventionally barnstorming beginning. Mackerras relished playing Mozart's musical games, and his astonishingly fast tempo gave the music an extreme, vertiginous quality. Yet the players of the SCO never lost their composure.
Alfred Brendel's performance of Mozart's G major piano concerto, K453, was another exercise in musical taste. He revealed a kaleidoscopic variety of theme and motive in the first movement, giving each phrase a distinct articulation and creating a subtle conversation with the orchestra, especially the woodwind section. The whole performance was delicately balanced between intellect and emotion, subtlety and virtuosity. The finale's coda unleashed a pair of hunting horns into the concerto, as if the music had leapt from the concert hall into the opera house.
Mackerras's performance of Schubert's Fourth Symphony was a master class in musical understanding. Composed in 1816 when Schubert was just 19, the symphony is often thought of as a diverting piece of juvenilia rather than a fully fledged symphonic argument. But Mackerras created a distinctly Schubertian momentum in his performance, energising the piece from its ominous introduction to its hurtling finale.
