Wolfie Goes to Hollywood: Finding the Magic in Mozart with Nicholas McGegan and Martin Chalifour
Martin Chalifour and Nicholas McGegan. Credit, right photo: Laura Barisonzi.
Ahead of an alfresco evening of Mozart at the Hollywood Bowl, conductor Nicholas McGegan and Los Angeles Philharmonic concertmaster Martin Chalifour discuss the joy of performing Mozart and how today's listeners can find meaning in the composer's music.
The Hollywood Bowl may appear to be a strange venue for the Los Angeles Philharmonic's evening of Mozart on September 6. With its grand amphitheater shell, modern sound system, and 17,000 seats, the Bowl seems a better fit for the party atmosphere that artists like Duran Duran and Pink Martini will bring to its stage this month.
But that rollicking vibe is exactly what makes Mozart an ideal composer to perform here. Wolfgang wasn't only the life of the party in 18th-century Vienna — he was also the DJ, composing works for countless social occasions. That's the spirit Nicholas McGegan, one of the most in-demand conductors of Mozart's music today, wants to share with the audience next week when he takes to the Hollywood Bowl stage to lead the Philharmonic.
"There's nothing I enjoy more than conducting Mozart," McGegan recently shared with me during a video chat. "He's one of the composers who suits the Bowl perfectly, where someone can be sipping a nice glass of wine during the slow movement of a symphony. It's very social music, and Mozart is right there with you. He would be great fun at a dinner party."
Although next week's “Mozart Under the Stars” program — Symphonies 32 and 36 (often referred to as the "Linz" Symphony) and the Fourth Violin Concerto with soloist Martin Chalifour — came together through the usual considerations of concert length, technical logistics, and not repeating any works the group recently performed, it interestingly veers into the more obscure side of Mozart. That means even die-hard classical music fans have an opportunity to get to know at least one of these works even better.
Cracking the Code of Mozart's "Linz" Symphony
Part of the thrill McGegan feels when he conducts Mozart is discovering new ways to bring the composer's musical intentions to life. He's jokingly referred to his conductor role as "second-guesser in chief," since no one can truly know how Mozart would have conducted or performed his own works. But thanks to a persistent drip of new musical scholarship, there's always more we can learn.
Case in point: the "Linz" Symphony, a jewel of a composition the composer penned in just four days during a brief stay in the Austrian city.
Getting to the heart of Mozart's Linz has proved a lifelong journey for McGegan. Unlike the composer's other late symphonies — from the 30th to the 41st — the original manuscript of the Linz has been lost to time. Mozart may have left it on a carriage on his trip back to Vienna, or sent it off to his musician father, Leopold. As a result, musicians had only been able to work with a raft of highly edited versions that obscure the symphony's effervescent spirit, much like centuries of applying varnish dulls the vibrancy of a painting's colors.
But in the second half of the 20th century, a score and incomplete set of the Linz's orchestral parts were found that dated to Mozart's lifetime, proving that style markings — including plenty of "goopy, gloopy slurs," as McGegan describes them — had been erroneously added throughout the work.
For McGegan, these breakthroughs give us "a pretty good idea of what the symphony may have sounded like while it was fresh off the page. You can never be 100% right, because the following year a new source may show up that upends everything you thought you knew. That's the thrill of it!"
Elements of Classical Style in Mozart
Questions of style, slurs, and phrasings are critical to a conductor, and even more important to the players themselves. Even when the LA Phil pares down its forces to match the smaller orchestras Mozart wrote for, there are dozens of musicians who have to agree on matters of style. And when the spotlight is on you as a soloist — as it will be on the Philharmonic's principal concertmaster, Martin Chalifour, during the Hollywood Bowl program — the pressure to get things right is even greater.
Chalifour is no stranger to Mozart's violin concertos, which he's been performing since his student days in Montreal. In fact, the Fourth Concerto was one of the first concertos he performed as a soloist after joining the Philharmonic 25 years ago. But even decades of familiarity with a work doesn't release the performer from the challenge of honing the understated style needed for Mozart.
"The Fourth is the most virtuosic of Mozart's violin concertos," Chalifour told me on a recent video call. "It's humorous and light, but you have to make sure you're bringing a clarity of sound and rhythmic rigor to the performance. You also have to bring a core of beauty to your sound in some way. The elegance of the music demands that you play lighter than in most other pieces."
Finding intense beauty of sound through musical restraint may seem like a paradox, but it's all part of the formula for effective Mozart. And for Chalifour, it's important to showcase the complexity of the composer's music alongside his humor. "Even if you take the simplest Mozart piece — something he wrote when he was 10 — you're talking about a piece that's incredibly sophisticated."
Listening to Mozart with Modern Ears
While today's audiences largely appreciate the beauty of Mozart's style, the grace and elegance so typical of the 18th-century Viennese School, few would call listening to the music itself a visceral experience, like they would Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or Mahler's Sixth. That's because, in many ways, our ears have been changed by the 200 years of symphonic music written since Mozart's death. It's become overtly emotional, with striking dissonances and a greater sense of rhythmic freedom at play that make moments of triumph and despair even more raw.
So how can our 21st-century ears find the magic and meaning in Mozart's music?
McGegan sees a lot of parallels between this question and the current state of movies. "Audiences will get terribly bound up in some Marvel movie and would find Pride and Prejudice extremely boring. You have to listen intently and put a bit of work in to enjoy Jane Austen, as opposed to the Wham! Kapow! of an action film, where you just sit there and the action comes to you.
"I'm not saying Mahler is a Marvel comic! But his music is very eventful. With Mozart, you have to be able to keep the tunes in your head so you can see how he develops them. You can't just let it wash over you like you can with some other music. You do have to meet the composer halfway."
The comparison is apt. You can say you love Beethoven's Ninth for the epic first entrance of the choir, or Mahler's Sixth Symphony for the three hammer blows of fate that erupt from the orchestra's mammoth percussion section, which mark the downfall of the symphony's hero.
But can you similarly love Mozart's Linz Symphony for its sophisticated form and the clever way he inverts the opening movement's second theme?
In 2022, perhaps we don't need to limit ourselves to red-hot musical experiences, where the music consumes us completely. Repeated listening in our digital era — where we can attend concerts of Mozart's music season after season while streaming his 626-plus works at any time on our phones — offers us more opportunities than ever to dive in deep, figure out how the gears move in Mozart's music, and ultimately fall in love with his work.
"You start to see the music in a more refined way over time," McGegan said. "Unlike Mozart's audiences, who only heard each piece once, we can listen to them over and over again and get more and more out of it."
Just like making a new friend or nurturing a romantic relationship, forging a deeper relationship with Mozart can be as simple as spending more time with him. Because in many ways, Mozart was simply too clever, too quick-witted a composer for us ever to hear everything he had to say in one listen. Rather than blowing the listener away, this is music that asks you to lean in, to uncover its many treasures over time.
On the surface, you can't hear the human struggle, the constant wrestling with ideas and Fate that make Beethoven and Mahler's music so gripping. Mozart makes it all seem too easy. But strip away the brilliant displays of logic, the imaginative melodies that come flying at your ears in every single bar. In its purest form, Mozart's music is a celebration of life — the joys and sorrows we experience every day, the deep love we hold for family and friends, and the limitless potential of art.
Finding the magic and meaning in Mozart may not come easy, but it's so very worth it. As Chalifour said: "If you've never heard Mozart before, even a bad performance of his work could be life-changing. His music is an outstanding example of the achievement of the human spirit."
