Concert Review: Live...With a Net

Joshua Bell rings out at Mostly Mozart.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Joshua Bell and friend.
 Photo by Eric Kabik for IMG Artists.

The influence of Johann Sebastian Bach on Western music is pretty much incalculable, beyond the words of a mere blog to describe. On Tuesday night, Joshua Bell returned to the Mostly Mozart Festival for an evening celebrating Bach's legacy and influence on three composers who followed him: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann.

Concert Review: Famous Last Words

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra plays Beethoven and Haydn.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Watch out for that tree: pianist Steven Osborne.
Photo by Eric Richmond © 2014 from the artist's website 

The term "classical" music takes its name from the so-called "classical" era, from 1774 to 1827. This was a time where composers became interested in writing structured works that adhered to their perception of architectural perfection in the Greek and Roman ("classic") style. These composers, which include Gluck, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven became masters of putting beautiful content into strict form and their work still endures like those ruins in Italy and Greece.

Concert Review: The Bucolic Beethoven

It's mostly--make that all Beethoven as Mostly Mozart continues.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Emanuel Ax. Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco for EmanuelAx.com and Sony Classical.

The second concert series of this year's Mostly Mozart Festival showed total focus on Ludwig van Beethoven, presenting a program that consisted exclusively of that composer's work. On Friday night, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra played Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Sixth Symphony, representing two cheerful highlights from this popular composer's vast catalogue.

Concert Review: Evolution Calling

Bach and Mendelssohn are featured at Mostly Mozart.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Stephen Hough. Photo by Stanley Fefferman.

When attending a concert at Mostly Mozart consisting of standard repertory works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn and Mozart himself, one can be hard pressed to tease out a connection between abstract classical compositions from different time periods. The challenge becomes greater over the course of a long festival, made more so when one's occupation consists of writing reviews on a classical music blog.

Happily, this week's penultimate Mostly Mozart program (seen Wednesday night) consisted of threee works that made a coherent whole. Conductor Andrew Manze chose Mendelssohn's concert arrangement of Bach's Third Orchestral Suite, the younger composer's own First Piano Concerto (played by Stephen Hough) and a Mozart favorite, the ubiquitous but forward-thinking Jupiter Symphony. The choice of Mozart's last symphony seemed particularly apt, as the Jupiter anticipates at what would become the strange world of 19th century Romanticism.