By Eileen Wingard
LA JOLLA, California –Nancy Laturno, the longest presiding manager and CEO of any San Diego Music Organization, welcomed the audience to Mainly Mozart’s 37th season and proudly announced that San Diego’s Mainly Mozart, North America’s largest Mozart Festival, has been recognized by the Mozarteum Salzburg as one of only thirty “Mozart Communities” worldwide. Also, it is one of four local music organizations recently welcomed into the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center for a three-year residency.
The first half of the concert opened with an obscure work by Mozart, a duet for two violins with basso continuo, Serenade in C Major, Ganz kleine Nachtmusik (Complete Small Night Music). The seven miniature movements, which included a March, Minuets and a Polonaise, were given elegant readings by David Kim, Concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Nurit Bar-Josef, Concertmaster of the National Symphony, and Scott Pingel, Principal Bass of the San Francisco Symphony.
Following intermission, seven concertmasters, from the Mainly Mozart Orchestra, composed mostly of principal players from orchestras around the country, performed Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. Seasons from the two works were played alternately.
David Kim, also serving as concertmaster of this season’s Mainly Mozart Orchestra, opened with a crisp, musical rendition of the three-movement opening concerto of Vivaldi’s work, Spring. Not only was the soloist’s playing noteworthy, but the first violin stand’s countermelodies were notable for their clarity and precision. Even the languid repeated note of the Principal Viola, Brant Bayless, Principal in the Utah Symphony, imitating a docile dog, was done with artistry.
Next came the first movement of the Piazzolla work, Summer, a movement infused with seductive melodies, played with the right suavity by Jun Iwasaki, concertmaster of the Kansas City Symphony.
Vivaldi’s Summer got a dazzling performance by Jeffrey Multer, Concertmaster of the Florida Orchestra, the orchestra whose conductor is currently Michael Francis.
Nurit Bar-Josef, concertmaster of the National Symphony, rendered a refined performance of Piazzolla’s Autumn with its impressive cadenza. That movement also showcased the orchestra’s principal cellist, Robert DeMaine, Principal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in a stunning cadenza.
Nurit Bar- Josef, daughter of an Israeli American father, was selected for concertmaster of the National Symphony by the conductor at the time, the acclaimed American maestro, Leonard Slatkin, who was my student in the senior orchestra at John Burroughs Junior High School in Los Angeles, when he was a seventh and eighth grader. In fact, I gave Leonard his first podium experience, conducting the John Burroughs Senior Orchestra in Morton Gould’s Pavanne.
Alexander Velinzon, Associate Concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, did an admirable job with Vivaldi’s Autumn and Nathan Olsen brought his golden tone to Piazzolla’s Winter. Olsen is Co-Concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony.
Zach DePue, Concertmaster of the Naples Symphony used extreme dynamics and shivering speed for the icy soundscape of Vivaldi’s Winter and David Kim concluded with a virtuosic reading of Piazzolla’s Spring, with the last word played by the harpsichord, the opening measures of Vivaldi’s Spring.
The audience was invited to join the conductor and the orchestra in the courtyard following the concert for a toast to celebrate the opening of their season.
There was indeed, much to celebrate at this opening full-house concert. But most of all, it was the remarkable performances of each soloist and the excellent accompaniments by the string ensemble under Mainly Mozart’s artistic director, Michael Francis.
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Eileen Wingard, a retired violinist with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, is a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts.