Ron Bierman, Broadway World San Diego, 20th June 2017
“‘Mozart in a party mood,’ conductor Michael Francis announced as he introduced the composer’s Contra Dances to begin the concert. And the same party mood prevailed throughout much of the evening. The first and third movements of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 owe a lot to the most spirited of Mozart’s concertos; Mozart’s Symphony in D Major, K. 204 (213a), was written while he was still heavily influenced by the gallant style of the Manheim School; and Prokofiev’s first symphony, which concluded the concert with a burst of youthful energy, is a tuneful delight, written, with tongue in cheek, in the style of Haydn.
Eleven members of the full Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra performed the contra dances at their music stands stage-forward. Francis called for sprightly tempos with an appropriate touch of royal stateliness that made it easy to imagine a ball room full of periwigs, knee-breeches, and elaborate floor-length gowns. (It’s a courtly 18th Century party, not a modern rave.)…
[Prokofiev “Classical Symphony”] is usually performed by a large modern orchestra, but its Haydn-like instrumentation and structure are well suited to the closer to chamber-size Festival Orchestra. The final movement, played at an exhilarating virtuosic pace, produced many admiring smiles, including mine.”
