Middling Mozart

IT IS EASY to play Mozart badly, Symmetrical phrases and harmonies that sound simple to most modern cars can become lifeless in unskilled hands. Even for performers with talent and enthusiasm there are problems, at the Harvard and Smith Glee Clubs found out last Saturday in their Sanders performance of Mozart's Grand Mass in C-Minor.

Mozart was never very interested in writing music for the Church. He wrote only two great religious works, neither of which was inspired by religious devotion. He composed the Requiem in anticipation of his own death, and wrote the C-Minor Mass is response to a new he made during his wife's illness Both of these works are on finished.

Perhaps he found the demands of church music inimical to his own expressive needs. The church has always wanted voice-oriented music with the primary function of expressing devotional texts. Mozart's style, however, is instrument oriented. His church music tended to glorify itself at the expense of religious sentiment. For Mozart, the voice and the word were always secondary to the internal demands of the music.

In contrast, F. John Adams's best performances at Harvard have been of the sacred vocal music of the Renaissance. He has always showed marvelous sensitivity to those flowing vocal lines and fluid rhythms. But he had some real problems in coping with the Mozart Mass. His right-hand-only style of conducting with a hammer-like delivery of each beat led to disconcerting accents on each quarter-note. Mozart's long phrases were broken up as the music chugged along.

Adams did his usual superb job preparing the large chorus, however. Like all Adams choruses, they coupled clear diction and impeccable intonation with beautifully blended tone. The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra was not nearly as impressive. Ragged and insensitive string playing and poor intonation in the winds marred many of the soft choral sections as well as the expressive sole arise, Beverly Morgan, Frank. Hoffmeister, and David Evitts handled their sole chores admirably but soprano Mary Sindoni was not up to the task. Her voice sounded almost out of control at times and her phrasing was stiff and lifeless.

THE PERFORMANCE as a whole had moments of great power and beauty, largely due to the enthusiast and disciplined singing of the chorus, but there was little overall sense of direction or shape. Individual sections failed to build properly because the musician always gave everything they had at the first opportunity instead of holding back to create a real dramatic climax Adams's inability to create carefully sculpted large sections prevented the performance from maintaining high emotional intensity. Without a single driving interpretation, the music lived--and died--from moment to moment.

In an Inventive bit of programming, a Mozart chamber work, the Clarinet Quintet, was also performed. Featured clarinetist David Kass was dazzling both technically and interpretively. With incredible breath control and unwaveringly beautiful tone, he gave the quintet a riveting emotional focal point. He was assisted by a fine string quartet with HRO concerto competition winner Lynn Chang as first violinist. Their sound was well blended, and if a lack of sensitivity to the light-hearted humor of the last two movements ended the piece on a dry note, the performance as a whole showed a unity and sincerity of interpretation.

Well-played Mozart always sounds so transparent, so clear and simple. But the failures of both technique and vision on Saturday showed again that he is the most deceptively difficult of the great composers.