BOWL MOZART

At 10:50 on Sunday the final joyous strains of Mozart’s “The Marriage of
Figaro” filled the cool night air at the Hollywood Bowl. Billed variously as
a “Mozart Akademie” and a “Mozart Mini-Marathon,” the concert had begun 4
hours and 20 minutes earlier, and had covered a lot of ground, all of it
Mozartian. The crowd number 9,725, small by Bowl standards but a favorable
comparison to the total count of people who heard Mozart’s music during his
lifetime.It was a heady event: three overtures, a serenade for winds, three concertos
plus one extra concerto movement, one symphony and nearly the whole last act
from “Figaro” (minus only the arias for Marcellina and Basilio that are
usually left out anyway). Historians have noted that concerts of this length
were common in Mozart’s time, and that they did, indeed, go by the name
“Akademie.”The splendid young orchestra of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute, the
orchestra’s summer training program, now in its tenth year and impossible to
praise too highly, held the stage all evening, although there were some
personnel substitutions along the way. A wide screen was used to cut down the
Bowl’s huge stage to fit the modest proportions of a Mozart-sized orchestra,
and this had the effect of brightening the sound considerably. In terms of ensemble quality, as well as the excellence of individual players,
this is a top-grade orchestra. Mozart’s scoring favors the wind contingent;
the flutes, oboes and clarinets of this year’s Institute Orchestra made some
elegant sounds throughout the long and demanding concert.At that there were some downs as well as ups. The guest instrumental soloists
were uniformly poor: Misha and Cipa Dichter clattering their way through the
Two-Piano Concerto (K. 365); Misha himself in as rash and unaffectionate
saunter through the A-major Concerto (K. 488) as any anti-Mozartian could
dream of hearing; Jaime Laredo, as conductor and soloist, clipping the wings
of the G-major Violin Concerto (K. 216) and throwing in some dreadful cadenzas
(by Sam Franko) along the way.As amends, there was a splendid vocal group, most of them younger Music Center
Opera stars-to-be, to do full justice to the changing moods, the sorrow and
the hilarity of the “Figaro” excerpt, done in concert format. Jennifer
Trost, who sang the Countess in her recent European opera debut, came home to
sing those few poignant phrases most disarmingly. Hector Vasquez and Jennifer
Smith were a delightful Mr. and Mrs. Figaro, standing stock still and even so
managing to suggest the drama in their roles, as did John Atkins as the ill-
tempered Count.The evening’s conductors included this summer’s four trainees: William Eddins,
Susan Davenny Wyner, Thomas Dausgaard and Arthur Post. David Alan Miller led
the two-piano concerto, and Lawrence Foster led the opera excerpt with a fine
sense of underlining the important role the orchestra plays in this
music.Overhead, the air traffic was a constant bane; one tended to lose count after a
dozen or so helicopters. But up there, too, beaming his benefice on the crowd,
was the little fellow whose music the night was intended to honor. Mozart
looked happy, this once.