The distinguished Canadian conductor Bernard Labadie returned to lead the San Francisco Symphony this weekend, bringing a fascinating — if somewhat quirky — program composed entirely of works by Mozart.
Labadie has a lifetime of experience conducting Baroque and Classical-era music. Four decades ago, he founded the Quebec-based early-music orchestra Les Violons du Roy (the name recalls the string ensemble that entertained Louis XIV). Labadie has been a frequent guest conductor at many major orchestras, including a number of appearances with the Symphony over the past two decades.
He presented a side of Mozart seldom heard even by the most avid concertgoers on Thursday afternoon, Nov. 21, at Davies Symphony Hall. There were arias, but not from the operas as we know them. There was an overture, but not one of the chestnuts. There was a curious piece of musical Freemasonry.
And there was one of the great Mozart symphonies — No. 39 in E-Flat Major. Labadie led the work with energetic phrasing and expression, broad gestures, and intent eye contact with the orchestra. With his encouragement, longer notes were given dynamic energy. Tempos were brisk, and contrasts — rhythmic, dynamic, emotional — were forcefully articulated. However, the rhythm was sometimes blurred at the beginning of a new section, as if the players were still uncertain about Labadie’s beat.
As a whole, the program offered valuable insight into Mozart’s hectic working life. Most of the repertoire came from the last five years of the composer’s career, when he seemed driven by his ambitions, his overflowing creativity, and of course, the need to make a living.
Making a living meant writing and producing operas — and that meant dealing with singers who didn’t want to sing what you’d already written. We might think that The Marriage of Figaro is just fine with Susanna’s wonderful aria “Deh vieni, non tardar” (Come, do not delay), but a new soprano taking on the role several years after the opera’s premiere didn’t think so. And she just happened to be the librettist’s mistress. So Mozart had to write a new aria — “Al desio, di chi t’adora” (At the wish of one who adores you) — and it’s gorgeous.
Ditto for “Schon lacht der holde Frühling” (Now the gentle spring smiles), another replacement aria, this time for an opera that Mozart didn’t even write. His sister-in-law needed a new song for a show she was in, so he wrote one (he would later make her into the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute). And when yet another aria was needed for a new production of his opera Idomeneo, the eminently creative Mozart (always short of cash) cranked out a splendid coloratura song — “Non temer, amato bene” (Fear not, beloved).
These forgotten gems were masterfully delivered on Thursday by English soprano Lucy Crowe. Crowe sang Susanna at the Metropolitan Opera two years ago (with the original arias, not the replacements) and starred at Cal Performances last year in The English Concert’s presentation of Handel’s Rodelinda. With a silken legato, richly colored tone, and nimble coloratura in virtuosic passages, Crowe made these songs far more than replacement arias, mining them for their varied affects of sweetness, sorrow, longing, and anxiety.
In addition to the Symphony No. 39, the program included two seldom-heard orchestral pieces. The Overture to La Clemenza di Tito, written only several months before the composer’s death, is in a serious vein, full of martial vigor and foreboding. Even more solemn is the strange Masonic Funeral Music, a stately processional with a dark timbre that foregrounds low wind instruments — contrabassoon and a kind of low clarinet known as a basset horn.
The star of the program, as usual, was Mozart himself, inventive and engaging even when writing an aria for a grumpy soprano.
This story was first published in Datebook in partnership with the San Francisco Chronicle.
