John Frayne | An homage to Mozart | Music

Ian Hobson and the Sinfonia da Digital camera had been on the gold customary at their Oct. 22, live performance in Tina Weedon Smith Recital Corridor. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was on the live performance’s heart, with music additionally by Mozart’s buddy, Josef Haydn, and by a contemporary admirer of Mozart, French composer Jacques Ibert.

The live performance started with Mozart’s symphony No. 38 in D Main. This nice work derives its identify, “Prague,” from Mozart’s shut affiliation with that capital metropolis of the dominion of Bohemia. Mozart’s masterful opera, “The Marriage of Figaro,” had been given solely a tepid reception in Vienna in Might 1786. In Prague, in December 1786, that opera had been an unlimited success. Mozart was introduced to listen to the Prague manufacturing, and as a gesture of thanks, he wrote the “Prague” symphony, which was premiered in January 1787.

The primary motion of that symphony opens with a solemn introduction, considerably just like the music for the Stone Visitor in Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni,” written for Prague within the following 12 months. Hobson and the Sinfonia introduced out the marvelous structural perfection of this motion. Their efficiency additionally emphasised the sweetness combined with sternness of the gradual motion and the giddy brilliance of the rondo finale. This symphony lacks a minuet motion.

The second work on this system was Josef Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante, written throughout Haydn’s extremely profitable first go to to London within the early 1790s. It’s fascinating to listen to Mozart’s music cheek and jowl with Haydn’s. It appears to me that the place Mozart’s is subtler, Haydn’s is extra direct.

Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante differs from a concerto in that it was supposed to indicate off the abilities of a bunch of performers moderately than one, on this case, a violin, cello, oboe and bassoon. Be it famous that the violin half was written for the impresario Johann Peter Salomon, who managed Haydn’s London visits, and thus it was that the violin half is particularly sensible.

At this live performance, the violin was performed by Michael Barta, the concertmaster of the Sinfonia da Digital camera, and professor of violin at Southern Illinois College. The cello soloist was Amy Claire Catron, first cellist of the Sinfonia in addition to the Millikin-Decatur Symphony Orchestra. The oboe soloist was John Dee, professor of oboe on the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and first oboe of the Sinfonia, and the bassoon soloist was Henry Skolnick, who’s lively within the music publishing enterprise in addition to first bassoon with the Sinfonia. These soloists with the Sinfonia joined in a peppy studying of this light-hearted and enticing rating. Every soloist had their probability to shine, in solo moments or mixed in a number of voiced passages. Their efforts had been greeted with sustained applause.

After intermission, Ian Hobson performed and led a delicate and nuanced efficiency of Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Main, Ok. 488. This Concerto begins moderately modestly, however quickly the beat picks up into an thrilling first motion. The gradual motion featured Hobson’s tender enjoying, joined with effective work by J. David Harris on clarinet and Jonathan Keeble on flute. This concerto was composed only a few months earlier than “The Marriage of Figaro,” and the rondo finale gave proof that opera was on Mozart’s thoughts. Towards the tip of the finale, a typical comedian opera melody was launched to hitch within the enjoyable. Hobson and the Sinfonia had been loudly applauded for his or her glorious enjoying.

As a dessert to this feast of Mozart and buddy, the live performance closed with Jacque Ibert’s “Hommage a Mozart,” written in 1956 to have fun the 2 hundredth anniversary of Mozart’s beginning in 1756. Ibert spares no time in tumbling right into a procession of musical pratfalls, cheeky tunes, whiplash tuttis, trumpet fanfare and a really resounding “interval” coda. It was a good selection to finish a live performance that was certainly an homage to Mozart.

John Frayne hosts “Classics of the Phonograh” on Saturdays at WILL-FM and, in retirement, teaches on the UI. His e-mail is frayne@illinois.edu.