Above: Harry Dean Stanton in "Lucky," directed by John Carroll Lynch
Late Mozart, Pulsing with Flie
I’m guilty of never having attended an Aston Magna Music Festival concert before. Last Friday night, I found out what I’ve been missing.
Aston Magna specializes in period-instrument performances of Baroque and early Classical music. In the new Lázló Z. Bitó Conservatory Building at Bard College, an ensemble of two violins, viola, cello, and clarinet took on the late works of Mozart.
The first half of the concert featured the Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563. This is one of those cerebral Mozart pieces that hews to Classical forms (sonata, minuet, rondo) yet bends them nearly to the breaking point. It makes one wonder where Mozart’s music would have gone had the composer lived longer.
Daniel Stepner, violin (and Aston Magna’s artistic director), David Miller, viola, and Loretta O’Sullivan, cello, did a good job bringing this complex music to light. Their intonation occasionally slipped, but that must be attributed in part to the challenges of playing period instruments made with strings of gut. The sound tends to be “stringier” and less robust than that of modern instruments.
As it turns out, the first half was just a taste of what was to come. Following the intermission, violinist Julie Leven joined in for the Adagio and Fugue, K. 546, a short but intense piece combining Mozart’s innate sense of drama with a nod to Bach. Outside of the monumental fugue finale of the last symphony (“Jupiter,” K. 551), this may be the greatest fugue Mozart wrote.
At last, Eric Hoeprich came out with his historical replica “basset” clarinet for the Clarinet Quintet, K. 581. (Along with Brahms’ quintet, these are the twin towers of the form.) It turns out Anton Stadler, for whom Mozart wrote the quintet and clarinet concerto, played just such an instrument, which has an extension for lower notes, a curved neck, and an odd bell at a right angle to the body of the clarinet.
It was hard to know what was more ravishing, the sound of this handmade instrument, with its boxwood body and few keys, or the flawless playing of Hoeprich. Simply put, this was the finest performance of this classic of the repertoire I have ever heard.
The Aston Magna Festival’s 45th anniversary season continues through the summer, with “Arias and Sinfonias from Biblical Oratorios” June 29 and 30 and July 1 at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., Bard, and St. James Place in Great Barrington, “Paganini: The 24 Caprices for Violin” July 6, 7, and 8 (same locations), “Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ and Its Mozartean Models” July 13 and 15 (Brandeis and Great Barrington only), and “Voices and Viols: Music from the Court of Isabella D’Este” July 20 and 22 (Brandeis and Great Barrington). A half-hour preconcert talk precedes each concert.
For tickets and information, call 888-492-1283 or go to www.astonmagna.org.
Aston Magna specializes in period-instrument performances of Baroque and early Classical music. In the new Lázló Z. Bitó Conservatory Building at Bard College, an ensemble of two violins, viola, cello, and clarinet took on the late works of Mozart.
The first half of the concert featured the Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563. This is one of those cerebral Mozart pieces that hews to Classical forms (sonata, minuet, rondo) yet bends them nearly to the breaking point. It makes one wonder where Mozart’s music would have gone had the composer lived longer.
Daniel Stepner, violin (and Aston Magna’s artistic director), David Miller, viola, and Loretta O’Sullivan, cello, did a good job bringing this complex music to light. Their intonation occasionally slipped, but that must be attributed in part to the challenges of playing period instruments made with strings of gut. The sound tends to be “stringier” and less robust than that of modern instruments.
As it turns out, the first half was just a taste of what was to come. Following the intermission, violinist Julie Leven joined in for the Adagio and Fugue, K. 546, a short but intense piece combining Mozart’s innate sense of drama with a nod to Bach. Outside of the monumental fugue finale of the last symphony (“Jupiter,” K. 551), this may be the greatest fugue Mozart wrote.
At last, Eric Hoeprich came out with his historical replica “basset” clarinet for the Clarinet Quintet, K. 581. (Along with Brahms’ quintet, these are the twin towers of the form.) It turns out Anton Stadler, for whom Mozart wrote the quintet and clarinet concerto, played just such an instrument, which has an extension for lower notes, a curved neck, and an odd bell at a right angle to the body of the clarinet.
It was hard to know what was more ravishing, the sound of this handmade instrument, with its boxwood body and few keys, or the flawless playing of Hoeprich. Simply put, this was the finest performance of this classic of the repertoire I have ever heard.
The Aston Magna Festival’s 45th anniversary season continues through the summer, with “Arias and Sinfonias from Biblical Oratorios” June 29 and 30 and July 1 at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., Bard, and St. James Place in Great Barrington, “Paganini: The 24 Caprices for Violin” July 6, 7, and 8 (same locations), “Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ and Its Mozartean Models” July 13 and 15 (Brandeis and Great Barrington only), and “Voices and Viols: Music from the Court of Isabella D’Este” July 20 and 22 (Brandeis and Great Barrington). A half-hour preconcert talk precedes each concert.
For tickets and information, call 888-492-1283 or go to www.astonmagna.org.