San Francisco Classical Voice

I had known of the British pianist Stephen Hough's playing through an elegant recording of a Mendelssohn concerto that I'd heard on the radio. So it was particularly interesting to hear him play a Mozart concerto (K.271) with the Australian Chamber Orchestra last Thursday at Herbst Theatre. Hough played this early work of Mozart with a clear, dry tone that was enjoyably angular, making spare use of the sustaining pedal and occasionally softening the edge of the sound with the una-corda pedal. This enabled him to play certain passages in a hushed pianissimo, and made for a moment in the second-movement's cadenza where the music became so melancholy, and Hough's playing so quiet, that the piece seemed on the verge of expiring. A few moments later, in the third-movement rondo, he brought out a motoric athleticism in the music. The orchestra constantly varied their sonority, contrasting the more traditional balance of soloist and accompanist with passages where the piano was enveloped in the sound of the orchestra. This was certainly one of the finest performances of a Mozart concerto, live or recorded, that I've heard.

Throughout the concert, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, led by violinist Richard Tognetti, played with great plasticity. In the Haydn Symphony No.49 that began the program, they alternated a graceful, refined emphasis of certain beats (expected and unexpected) with a vigorous, "earthy" articulation that had Tognetti looking and sounding like a country fiddler. They varied the amount of vibrato used, had a wide dynamic range, and weren't afraid of the score's silences. This way of playing revealed in each piece much of what is unique to each composer. After hearing the Haydn, with its crucial rhythmic elements, it was clear that the expressive quality of Mozart's music was due much more to melody and harmony.

The second half of the concert began with the Australian Peter Sculthorpe's String Sonata No. 2, a 1988 rewriting of his String Quartet No. 9 from 1975. Despite the composer's great physical distance from the Western Hemisphere, and Tognetti's emphasis in his spoken remarks on Sculthorpe's interest in "eastern" ideas, the piece had a solidly-traditional European sense of musical continuity and dramatic flow. Any feelings of "emptiness" brought on by the music's repetitive rhythms and minor-key harmonies were suffused with a dark sense of impending catastrophe and angst. I know of composers from Korea, Japan and the Phillipines writing decidedly "non-western" music for chamber orchestra; the ACO could play an active role in exposing audiences to such music by Australian composers.