A Little Night Music
Mozart Unwrapped, Kings Place, London
30 November 2011
We drifted towards the end of the year as we began it, namely, entranced by the genius of Mozart. Having given over our house entirely to BBC Radio 3's exclusive scheduling of all the music Mozart composed over the first twelve days of 2011 ("Every Note He Wrote" - a bold, superb celebration of the life of one of the world's greatest ever composers), we booked into the Mozart Unwrapped series which has been running at Kings Place all year.
This was a wonderful chamber orchestra performance by St Martin in the Fields, directed conductorless by Isabelle van Keulen from the first violin. The discipline and sheer joy brought to bear on the music by the performers energised old favourites such as Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (Serenade in G, K525) and Symphony No 40 in G Minor (K550), and charmed us with the lesser known Sinfonia Concertante in E flat (K364), in which the sonorous tones of the solo viola combined beautifully with the lyrical solo violin.
What was particularly noticeable about the performance was the energy, commitment and absolute enjoyment exhibited by the performers. Exchanging smiles and glances, and in the absence of a conductor actively needing to stay in visual contact with each other, they communicated their love of this wonderful music easily and infectiously.
SB
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