Mozart vs. Salieri or Shakespeare vs. Shaffer

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. "Many Faces of Mozart Festival." Interplay: Mozart and the Romantics. Rinnat Moriah (soprano), James J. Kee (baritone), Lindsay Trujillo (violin), Vladimir Feltsman, Martin Dubé, Di Wu (piano), Joseph Horowitz and Michael Beckerman (hosts, readers), Reni Calister, Orrin Saltzman (readers). Prudential Hall, Newark.

All play-in participants and attendees were invited to stay and hear a presentation by Festival Host Joe Horowitz and scholar Michael Beckerman on "Mozart and the Romantics."

The first thing they addressed was the romantic notion that Antonio Salieri murdered Mozart.

Just to make sure we heard some Mozart right away, the evening's pianist/conductor Vladimir Feltsman came out and played the finale to the C major Piano Sonata in C major, K. 330 (1778). Just why this was chosen was unclear. It is far from Mozart's probings of romanticism (for that one must turn to the A minor Sonata, K. 310, to be bowled over). In any case, it was a perfunctory play through by Feltsman who seemed to have the evening's concert on his mind. His playing was crisp and Mozartean in articulation, but he betrayed an unfortunate level of distraction as he several times lost track of the proper places for harmonies to change in the left hand.

Soprano Rinnat Moriah sang an effective virtuosic aria by Salieri filled with elegant and inventive fioratura just to make sure all assembled could now say they had actually heard his music. He was, let it not be forgotten, the Court Composer in the Vienna of Emperor Joseph II and highly respected for good reason.

Then Horowitz as Salieri and Beckerman as Mozart read excerpts from Alexander Pushkin's two-scene-tragedy Mozart and Salieri with amusing assistance from violinist Lindsay Trujillo, followed by a scene from Peter Shaffer's Amadeus in which Columbia High School sophomore Reni Calister played Constanza Weber (soon to be Frau Mozart).

This was all well and good, though Beckerman read with far more expression than Horowitz in both excerpts. It was as if Horowitz had little patience for Salieri and therefore read him without any enthusiasm, even suggesting a touch of disdain - sort of "anti-method."

If only they had taken the time to break the subject down as well as Mr. Cabrera had with Eine kleine. They became sidetracked by their own problems rather than with the challenges set by the subject. Though we heard Pushkin, in a consideration of Mozart and the Romantics how could they have ignored - not even mentioned! - Rimsky-Korsakov's opera setting of Pushkin's two-scene
mini-play? They probably didn't know that the opera had been performed in Princeton a few years back and thus even has a New Jersey history. But that's okay; few from outside the New Jersey scene would have guessed.

What was even less instructive was the pair's argument about the worth of the play/film Amadeus. What would have been worthwhile at a Mozart Festival would have been a separate event setting the scholarly record straight about the play and movie. Instead we got Horowitz suggesting that he could tell what Mozart was like from reading his letters. Neither scholar even suggested that there are accounts by contemporaries which are rather more helpful, though both must have read such descriptions.

Horowitz and Beckerman got huffy about Shaffer having Salieri describe out loud the opening of the great E-flat Divertimento while it is being heard off-stage. Though I cannot believe that either Horowitz or Beckerman would have ever intended to play the role of "elitist bogeyman", that is sadly just what they did. It was as if they had forgotten that many theater- (and movie-) goers would be quite unlikely to have the same acquaintance with music as concertgoers. Salieri's envious description, while it may have insulted the intelligence of certain cognoscenti, is actually a most effective exposition to the subject of the play for those less educated in music. The music's beauty coupled with Salieri's accurate, though envious, description is at the very heart of the play's theme.

They even got into a disagreement about when a play is exploitative and when not. Horowitz said he feels Shaffer exploits Mozart and Beckerman asked back just why is it exploitative for Shaffer to use Mozart as the subject of a play and not exploitative for Shakespeare to use Richard III? That was way off-topic in the first place, and to answer that it is because Shaffer is not Shakespeare, which was essentially Horowitz's position, is like saying "because." Worse, it smacks of elitism again by suggesting that those who liked the popular play and movie haven't the same elevation of taste as those who know and love the Bard's
histories.

They finally got back on track by talking about Liszt's Don Juan Fantasy and its special place in the romantic piano literature. Here they were better prepared and made strong points. Ms. Moriah and baritone James J. Kee from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia came out and sang two of the three Don Giovanni excerpts Liszt uses to construct the Fantasy: the duet "Là ci darem
la mano" and the Don's "credo" "Finch'han del vino." Kee also sang the languid serenade "Deh vieni alla finestra" which Liszt ignores.

And speaking of romanticism, one was left with the feeling that a large hall like Prudential, growing out of the late 19th century romantic ethos, would swallow these two singers even singing Mozart. Though the ever tasteful pianist Martin Dubé was the accompanist, there were moments when one felt that the singers were near their limits.

One had to wonder how the assessment of Mozart by E. T. A. Hoffmann, that quintessential early romantic who was himself the subject of a famous opera, could have been totally passed over. There was no mention of what is being performed upstairs in the "theater" during Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann (Don Giovanni). And there was only the barest mention of the performance history of Mozart in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet this was supposed to be "Mozart and the Romantics."

The finest point of the second session was the performance by pianist Di Wu, who has been heard several times in New Jersey. She seems almost wraithlike in build, so her unbelievable power and control in the insanely difficult Fantasy bowled over most who had never before heard her and left those who had again shaking their collective heads in awe. She settled into the 20-minute workout with utter security and left the audience cheering and standing.

She is the next big, big name. Period.

If her example rendered discussion of the "hero" in romanticism moot - a rich subject crucial to an understanding of the larger subject, it was not an issue raised during the afternoon, so few recognized the aptness of the heroic in the persona of Di Wu herself.

With so much worthwhile to have said, so little of use was actually spoken. All the meaning was in the music.

I was okay with that; I had to be. I am okay with that; it's as it ought to be.