Two hundred fifty years ago, one of the greatest figures in the
history of Western civilization was born. UCLA Live and the Los
Angeles Chamber Orchestra have plans to celebrate that birth in a
way unlike anything this country has seen.
Over the next 15 months, LACO and its director, Jeffrey Kahane,
plan to perform the entire cycle of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s
23 piano concertos in a seven concert series, something that has
never before happened in the United States. The first of three
concerts this season will start with concertos No. 5, 9 and 17 on
Jan. 22.
As the longtime resident orchestra of Royce Hall, LACO has
developed both a strong, devoted fan base and critical recognition.
Until now the orchestra has never directly collaborated with UCLA
Live, something both organizations have been looking for the chance
to do.
“LACO has long been renting Royce and we have had
discussions over time about getting more creatively
connected,” said David Sefton, director of UCLA Live.
“Jeff Kahane is an internationally renowned pianist and
conductor in his own right and so over the last couple of years
we’ve been talking about things that might work that we could
do together.”
This opportunity presented itself with the 250-year anniversary
of Mozart’s birth. Sefton and UCLA Live have long been
concerned with booking eclectic, contemporary and challenging
performers who sidestep conventional tastes and recombine old
themes in novel ways. Chamber music concerts, especially those that
feature only established works, are usually not a mainstay of a
UCLA Live season. Kahane and Sefton both insist that for this
occasion, a program of pure Mozart is as relevant now as ever.
“This is an incredible opportunity for audiences because
this is one of the most important bodies of repertoire in music
““ it would be like having the chance to, over the course of
two years, see all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays,” Kahane
said.
The 23 piano works span the composer’s career from his
precocious teenage years to what Kahane calls his “golden
era” of supremacy as Vienna’s most respected composer.
According to Kahane, listening to the entire cycle of works
provides a much deeper understanding of their content than
listening to a “greatest hits” of the 23 in isolation.
The seven-concert cycle will give audiences an experience of
musical immersion with the intention of bringing the music into the
same innovative position as two centuries ago.
“(These works) show how Mozart was constantly reinventing
the form, making tremendous advances and keeping audiences anxious
to hear how he was going to take some concept and surprise them in
ways they weren’t expecting,” Kahane said.
An aspect of Mozart’s concertos that Kahane hopes to see
emerge in the context of a full cycle is their theatricality. As a
composer who valued opera above all other musical forms, Mozart
cast instruments as wordless yet powerfully emotive characters
inside his instrumental writing.
“You begin to recognize the way certain kinds of music
““ certain themes, certain ideas, certain musical gestures
that he makes ““ represent different sides of the human
character, and you recognize the joker, the soldier, the lover,
etc.,” Kahane said.
Kahane will conduct the concertos from the piano, heading the
ensemble both as soloist and director. Dropping the baton in favor
of the keys would garner Mozart’s approval ““ modern
conducting wasn’t conceived until after his death ““ but
it was the interaction with other musicians rather than for the
sake of authenticity that swayed Kahane to perform this way. Acting
as one, or many, of the works’ operatic characters, Kahane
will lead the group with the confrontation, cooperation and
dialogue written between the piano and orchestra parts.
Playing while directing lets the pianist guide with emotion
instead of precision, organically influencing the orchestra’s
play more than physically soliciting it.
“It really becomes a collaborative effort where we skip
the dictating step and it becomes communication or something we do
together,” Kahane said. “That changes the experience,
not only for us, but also for the audience.”
This opportunity for spontaneity is what Kahane feels will make
these performances unique. Like most professional chamber
musicians, LACO’s instrumentalists have been familiar with
these pieces for their entire careers, allowing them to internalize
the music and move into the realm of direct emotional
interaction.
“We have this sort of extra-sensory communication going on
where we’re all listening to each other and we can be
spontaneous in a way that’s very unusual,” Kahane said.
“Although this isn’t the only orchestra in the world
that can do that, it’s one of very few.”
Whether out of deference for the composer’s birthday or
concern for authenticity, the Mozart pieces will be played in a
manner Sefton has termed “straight.” In other words,
the interpretation won’t shock anyone. Instead of reaching
audiences with visuals or contemporary programming, Sefton and
Kahane have chosen to teach them Mozart’s language.
Experiencing such a body of work will give listeners the tools to
penetrate the sounds of the 18th century and delve into the
emotional ambiguities that have made the composer’s work so
lasting. One Mozart piece may sound like another classical work,
but the sum of 27 pieces start to resemble the emotions that
audiences, even those not well-versed in this style, confront
daily.
“There’s a common saying about Mozart that
he’s “˜smiling through tears,'” Kahane said.
“Being so wonderfully tuned in to human psychology,
everything’s in there. … The melodies and the ideas are
(like) human experiences and not necessarily one thing or
another.”