Gianandrea Noseda; photo by Ramella&Giannese

One of the particular problems that comes with performing Beethoven's Ninth, at least with modern programming conventions, is how to complement it. At an hour to an hour and ten, it's too long to pair with a full-length concerto (unless you want a twenty-five-minute first half, a twenty-minute intermission, and a seventy-minute second half) but too short to program all by itself (as is often done with, say, any number of Mahler symphonies). The trick is to find an overture of about ten minutes that won't look completely flimsy next to perhaps the greatest warhorse in the symphonic repertoire.

Gianandrea Noseda, conducting the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra last Wednesday, chose another late work, the Consecration of the House overture. It’s not the most thrilling or commanding of Beethoven’s concert overtures, but it has history in its favor, as it and the Ninth were originally premiered together. The opening chords came in wide, flashing bursts as the strings played with stately breadth, showing off a rich, burnished tone. Noseda’s direction was both sensible and liberal, allowing the measured opening to flow naturally and organically into the spirited bounding that follows.

The MMF Orchestra is a reduced band, of the size we'd expect from the early classical period—twenty violins, as opposed to the thirty or so common for a modern symphony orchestra. All hands are usually called for when this piece is performed, so to hear it stripped down as it was on Wednesday gives the symphony an entirely different complexion. In a few spots the result was less than illuminating; at the opening, for instance, the reduced strings were able to play spectacularly softly, but the horns above them, which are marked pianissimo, seemed absolutely blaring. (Moreover, the acoustics of Avery Fisher Hall, modified annually for this festival, seemed especially unforgiving from where I sat, though others further back in the hall reported a different experience.)

In general, though, the scale of the orchestra allowed for a pared-away reading of the work, a sound that didn't envelop the audience as we're used to, but that still got at the meat of the music. Fewer in number, the strings were able to dig in and bow freely without fear of upsetting the balance.

There was solid playing and intelligent conducting throughout the symphony, but the highlight was a hair-raising rendition of the second movement. In this Scherzo (and in the Fifth's, for that matter) Beethoven displays a darker-than-pitch sense of humor, and the relentless thrashing of this movement's clockwork theme gets delightfully nasty. Noseda, though, managed to keep the music’s impishness from getting away from him, finding the very real wit underneath all of that bile, pairing the scherzo with a cool, singing trio.

Noseda led a sweet and ruminative account of the Adagio, though he found less variety here than in the rest of the symphony. The music sat mostly at one level of energy, which is not entirely out of place, but gave the sense of being “stuck.” The finale, too, initially seemed to be on a tight leash, sounding less than chaotic in its explosive presto introduction. What followed, though, was masterfully crafted, as Noseda’s conducting tantalized in the build-up to the main theme, teasing the audience with the echoed snatches from the earlier movements and keeping a lid on the orchestra right up through the celli’s first sotto voce purr of the “An die Freude” melody. The interpretation was intelligent, clear, and varied, leading us through beaming choral outbursts (courtesy of the Concert Chorale of New York, magnificently booming and richly toned), a delightfully coy march, and an intricately layered fugato section.

For star power, the vocal quartet featured the Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov, who was a commanding presence with his gigantic, smoky voice. This was not his most precise singing (he had an uncharacteristically rough time finding the pitches at the bottom of his range), but he brought richly colored, rough-hewn sound to his part. His three compatriots were all admirable in turn: The tenor Russell Thomas declaimed his soli with confidence and the two ladies—the mezzo-soprano Anna Maria Chiuri and the soprano Erika Grimaldi, in her U.S. debut—displayed precise, clear technique, weaving together beautifully when singing ensemble.

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