Mozart, Mahler mingle ... not!

Classical

Tom Aldridge

ISO Classical Series Program No. 20
Hilbert Circle Theatre
May 19-20

Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra music director Mario Venzago had a novel idea: interleaving the movements of Mozart’s most famous, most petite Serenade in G (“Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”), K. 525, with Mahler’s monumentally daunting Symphony No. 7 in E minor (“Song of the Night”), both works at least titularly dealing with night. But in the Friday morning rehearsal, Venzago didn’t like the result — at all. So, with full apologies just before the concert began for what had been billed and appeared in the program booklet, he then played all four Mozart serenade movements, 15 minutes’ worth, followed by an early intermission. Then he took on Mahler’s five-movement symphonic behemoth, which lasted an hour and 22 minutes. Both works were well-done, but the story hardly ends here.

For one thing, there is the issue of “night.” Mozart’s “A Little Night Music” connotes background music to a soirée: for people to eat, drink, converse and possibly dance to. He wrote many serenades for such purposes earlier in his life, notably the “Haffner” Serenade, K. 250, written for a specific evening event. And while the 40-minute-long “Haffner” is one of Mozart’s most boring pieces to sit through as a concert piece, K. 525 — its composition remaining a mystery — is a refinement, a distillation, a delightful condensation of serenade elements.

Mahler’s “Song of the Night” Symphony suggests a pervading darkness which evolves at its finish into broad sunlight and “endless” joy. Even if the two works’ nocturnal evocations hadn’t differed so profoundly, the stylistic clash between the Classical divertissement and the world wrenching post-Romantic symphony-grown-gargantuan (in both forces and length) cannot be reconciled, when mingling them, from any purely musical standpoint. Instead, why not create a program with a theme or melody repeated in different works from several stylistic periods of concert-music history to demonstrate the theme’s effect on the style in which it is used — and conversely the style’s emotive impact on the theme? There are many such examples one could draw on …

Notwithstanding, Venzago’s pairing of “Eine Kleine” and the Seventh, with a nice break in between, worked well because our conductor played them as separate entities; we got contrast rather than stylistic disruption. The serenade used 16 players — all strings — tightly wrapped around their conductor, the rest of the stage vacant. Venzago wrought precise, well-articulated playing with a touch of ritenuto (immediate pace slackening) at transition points — an effectively interpreted performance.

The Mahler — showing a stage packed like sardines, front-to-back, corner-to-corner — reintroduced me to a work that is better than I had earlier thought: The middle three movements form the core of the piece — the two Nachtlieds (Night Songs) framing a demonic Scherzo, both march-like in a symphony which celebrates the march as an ur-rhythm. From the dour first movement to the seemingly endless Finale, Mahler’s unique display of orchestral color captivated.