Andrew Meacham, Tampa Bay Times, 23rd January 2016
“With Mozart & More, which opened Friday at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, Francis and the orchestra sandwiched a piano concerto and a symphony by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart between Igor Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks concerto and a percussion composition by John Cage relying mostly on makeshift or primitive instruments…
The evening started with the 1938 work by Stravinsky, one of the 20th century’s most influential composers. The Concerto for Chamber Orchestra in E-flat, or “Dumbarton Oaks” (so named for the Washington, D.C. estate where the meetings that created the United Nations were held) is a 15-piece concerto in three movements. The 10 stringed instruments set an aggressive pace that is at once edgy and deferential to the baroque era Stravinsky wanted to honor.
All the musicians except for the cello and double bass stood to perform the piece, as if for an impromptu meeting. Two horns supported the strings while a single flute cut the other way, a kind of instrumental antiphony or counterpoint. The piece zigs and zags and races to an abrupt conclusion…
The concert closes with Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 (1788), in which the virtuoso’s full range of genius is on display. A dissonance early in the first movement cuts like a blade; the tempo soon quickens. By the fourth and final movement, the strings are leading furiously or suddenly softening, the symphony about to conclude or just shifting gears. Every time you think you know where it’s headed, Mozart pulls the rug out from under you.
The composer demands a lot out of orchestras, and so does Francis. It could be my imagination, but in his fourth month it is hard to listen to the orchestra without thinking that they are playing more cohesively than ever before. This evening is well worth attending, as Mozart & More unites the work of three ground-breaking musical minds in an energizing way.”
