By Lawrence Toppman
About once a season, the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra (CSO) programs a tapas concert: Pieces lasting 25 minutes or less, usually from different eras of music, that often serve as a mini-education for the uninitiated. I like these, because they forego showy concertos and hefty symphonies – in other words, stuff we hear too often – for less familiar works.
So it went Sunday at Knight Theater. We got Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments – and, despite the title, brass and double-basses – Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 6 and Mozart’s Symphony No. 25, sometimes known as “the Little G minor.” (“The Great G minor” is the 40th, for me his most appealing symphony.)
Jeri Lynne Johnson, a name new to me, conducted each work with elan. Orion Weiss, whose brow-knitted expression belied the pleasure he took and gave at the keyboard, handled the Stravinsky and Bach concertos adeptly. Amy Orsinger Whitehead and Victor Wang came downstage to play mellifluous flute solos in the Bach concerto, and the stripped-down orchestra rose to the different challenges of these pieces successfully.
The occasion was an odd one for two reasons. First, the cancellation of the Friday concert due to presumed snow meant the hall was nearly packed as far as I could tell, a gratifying thing.
Second, the largest number of latecomers I have seen in 45 years of Charlotte arts events streamed through the doors while the Bach suite was playing. Literally dozens of people were seated during the Air on the G String, the most famous four minutes on the program. I have no idea what cretin was responsible for this astonishing lapse of taste; latecomers should have stayed outside until the suite was over. But Johnson and the musicians flowed on, unruffled.
Johnson steered neatly between the majestic tempos set by time-encrusted tradition in Bach and the snappier versions preferred by baroque specialists. Fans of the latter might have been disappointed to get flutes instead of recorders and a piano instead of a harpsichord in his concerto, an arrangement of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 4. But I prefer the larger, richer sound, especially when someone like Weiss has the buoyancy and lightness of touch that suggests a harpsichord. (Sparkling baroque trumpets added an authentic flavor.)
Weiss put the hammer(s) down, literally and metaphorically, in Stravinsky. After a slow, lugubrious orchestral opening – maybe mock-lugubrious, as Stravinsky was a joker – Weiss’ cheeky explosion launched us into this percussive, neoclassical work. Yet he also spun out the slow movement’s main melody and found as much beauty as Stravinsky allowed him to reveal.
Mozart’s symphony had me on the edge of my seat before it started, mostly with anxiety: The CSO has sometimes come up short when tackling my favorite composer. Johnson gave the orchestra four quick beats with the baton to indicate tempo – I don’t know that I’ve seen other conductors do that here – and I relaxed, as I knew we were in for a stylish performance.
Mozart wrote this piece, the first of his memorable symphonies, when he was 17. In fact, it’s the gateway to greatness, the earliest hint of his mature style as a symphonic composer, with more drama and inventiveness than anyone would have expected from him by 1773. (Or from any 17-year-old ever, except perhaps Felix Mendelssohn and Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga.)
Johnson led the second movement at a smooth walking pace, which is what “andante” means, without lollygagging. The vivid minuet and breezy, all-too-brief finale sent us home with a spring in the step that Mozart would surely have appreciated.