TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/021191/0211440.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.3 KB | 181 lines

                                                                                MUSIC, Page 86

Hats Off to A Genius!


Worldwide, the Mozart bicentennial offers mostly the most

By OTTO FRIEDRICH


    From his podium at New York City's Lincoln Center last week,
Raymond Leppard gave a brisk downbeat and drew forth the
majestic D that opens the "Haffner" Symphony. In doing so, he
began the gala observance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 235th
birthday. He also began an unprecedented Lincoln Center
extravaganza: to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mozart's
death by performing during the next 19 months every note he
ever wrote.

    Leppard's lively performance of the "Haffner," with a
scaled-down orchestra assembled from the New York Philharmonic
and the Juilliard School Orchestra, was peculiar because it
broke off after the minuet. Then came two piano concertos, two
piano solos, a serenade and four individual arias (all
admirably performed by such soloists as pianist Jeffrey Kahane
and soprano Dawn Upshaw) before the "Haffner" finale arrived
as a kind of farewell.

    This sort of programming was standard in Mozart's day, and
Leppard was inaugurating the bicentennial by re-creating a
concert that Mozart himself had presented in 1783. "Suffice it
to say that the theater could not have been more crowded, and
that every box was full," the composer proudly wrote to his
father Leopold (which is why we know the details of the
program). "But what pleased me most of all was that His Majesty
the Emperor was present, and goodness! how delighted he was and
how he applauded me!"

    The Mozart bicentennial ranges far beyond Manhattan. On the
same day that the "Haffner" was resounding in Lincoln Center,
Mozart's "Prague" Symphony poured forth in Prague, and nine
other European cities chimed in with concerts of their own.
Then all 10 performances were broadcast in sequence over a
continentwide network, so that Europeans with grandiose Mozart
plans of their own could start their celebrations.

    The rest of the world has its claims too, for though Mozart
was very much the child of the 18th century enlightenment in
Austria, he is probably the most universally beloved of
classical composers. So while there will be concerts and
exhibits almost beyond counting in such traditional music
centers as London and Paris, there will also be Mozart
festivals in more unexpected places, ranging from Bartlesville,
Okla., to Dunedin, New Zealand. When all the cheering finally
dies, this will probably have been the largest and loudest
celebration of any artist in human history. Says one New Yorker
who prefers Puccini: "Where can I hide?"

    Mozart has not always been so universally popular. Though
he was famous during childhood as a keyboard virtuoso, his
myriad compositions were often regarded as dense and difficult
("Too many notes, my dear  Mozart," Emperor Joseph II supposedly
said). Musicians, however, recognized his greatness. "I love
Mozart as the musical Christ," said Tchaikovsky. "The most
tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters," said
Wagner, "in all centuries and in all the arts."

    But the Romantics imposed their own contradictory
misjudgments. While many considered some of Mozart's greatest
works admirably demonic (e.g. Don Giovanni), most smiled on his
sonatas as works of tinkly charm appropriate for young ladies
to perform in the parlor. That view of Mozart as a divinely
inspired but childlike innocent endured well into this century.
Only a few enthusiasts such as Sir Thomas Beecham and Artur
Schnabel kept emphasizing the depth and drama in his later
symphonies and piano works ("Too easy for students and too
difficult for artists," said Schnabel). Serious scholarship
helped; so did the revival of period instruments. The 1948
arrival of the LP record vastly broadened the availability of
pre-Romantic music, and enabled lots of people to hear lots of
Mozart for themselves. They loved him.

    He is, of course, eminently lovable: melodious, harmonious,
beautiful, an escape from all the ills that flesh is heir to.
"The only music yet written that would not sound out of place
in the mouth of God," George Bernard Shaw once wrote. But each
age hears the Mozart it wants to hear, and today's audiences
enjoy not only the exquisite serenity of this music but also
its emotions, its subtlety and wit. Indeed, Peter Sellars'
"modernized" stagings of the operas demonstrate a very
contemporary sense of anxiety and unhappiness. Still, the music
remains joyous and so eminently worth celebrating.

    The bicentennial celebrations are not all musical. The
British, for example, are staging a weekend of billiards
tournaments to commemorate Mozart's fondness for planning carom
shots while he composed music, and vice versa. Japanese
entrepreneurs have already started selling Mozart dolls, Mozart
watches, even Mozart sake manufactured to the strains of
Mozart's music. "Mozart is suitable because it is gentle and
smooth, not peculiar or chaotic," says the distiller. Mozart
tours are selling well, and France is operating a Mozart train
to several cities that the composer visited. The Austrians have
put Mozart's picture on their 5,000 schilling note ($500),
which will probably be just about enough to buy a small cup of
coffee mit Schlag at this year's Salzburg Festival.

    Mozart's native Salzburg is the high shrine of Mozartism.
The festivities started Jan. 2, when the celebrated Salzburg
Marionettes presented the first of the seven Mozart operas that
the 78-year-old troupe has in its repertoire. It will tour
Europe this spring and the U.S. in November. The Landestheater
offers a new Magic Flute as well as a restaging of Peter
Shaffer's popular but preposterous Amadeus. For those seeking
knowledge, an international symposium will provide 130
scholarly papers in four languages.

    Vienna, where the composer spent his last 10 years and which
he called "the best place in the world for my metier," has
plans that are accordingly sumptuous. The Staatsoper and the
Volksoper will play Mozart operas all season. The gilded halls
of the Schonbrunn Palace, where the six-year-old Mozart once
jumped into the lap of Empress Maria Theresa after one of his
concerts, will be the setting for all his string quartets, as
well as outdoor performances of Don Giovanni and The Marriage
of Figaro.

    But the Lincoln Center marathon wins the prize for
endurance. Mozart's complete works, including unfinished pieces
and arrangements, are now estimated to total 835 compositions,
instead of the familiar Kochel list of 626. The complete
presentation will enable a sufficiently dogged listener to
sample such obscure efforts as the unfinished opera L'Oca del
Cairo. And the quality of performances should be extremely high
-- Itzhak Perlman and Daniel Barenboim playing violin sonatas,
for example; Mitsuko Uchida all the piano sonatas; both the
Juilliard and Tokyo quartets on hand for chamber music.

    Almost equally exhaustive is the Mozart year's biggest
recording project: the collected works on 180 Philips CDs in
45 volumes, some 200 hours of music. Released at a rate of 12
to 15 CDs a month, the set already includes all the symphonies,
played by Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St.
Martin-in-the-Fields, and the piano concertos, performed mainly
by Alfred Brendel. This month's releases include the violin
concertos and wind concertos.

    Amid all the cheers, a few small doubts have been raised.
"It's hard not to see in Lincoln Center's bicentennial
gourmandizing a musical Trump Tower," Berkeley musicologist
Richard Taruskin complained in the New York Times. The
Economist was concerned that "the world will be in grave danger
of suffering from surfeit." "Mozart will be everywhere," sighed
the French weekly L'Express, "on posters, the radio, the front
page . . . not to mention Viennese confections and chocolate
Mozarts. Mozart wrote, `I would like to have all that is good,
true and beautiful.' Well, so he will and, alas, all that is
worst as well." Perhaps so, but while Mozart was not the
giggling twit popularized in Amadeus, he did like jokes and
games and high living, and he had a rich sense of his own
gifts. It is easy to guess that he would have enjoyed his
bicentennial enormously.