CONSIDERED OPINION OF THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA CONCERT OF 5/17/07

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Divertimento, K. 138; Piano Concerto No. 5, K. 175; Rondo for Piano and Orchestra, K. 392; Piano Concerto No. 27, K. 595 (Mitsuko Uchida, p. & cond.)

And so it ends at last: the cycle of Mozart Piano Concertos by Mitsuko Uchida and the Cleveland Orchestra, that is. The conclusion has been a long time coming. When the series began, the Department of Homeland Security had yet to commence operations. You could still get from New York to London or Paris in three and a half hours, courtesy of the Concorde. And the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had never won a Super Bowl.

Even so, the series has not been as exhaustive as you might think. Of the 27 numbered concertos, only 20 have in fact been included. One of Mozart's other bits and bobs for piano and orchestra joins concertos 5 and 27 on this weekend's program: the Rondo K. 382, which is an alternate final movement for number 5. Filling out the concert is the youthful Divertimento K. 138, performed without conductor.

Uchida’s performances have been so consistent over the years that this critic has been tempted to incorporate previous reviews by reference. And, in point of fact, if you wanted to know what Thursday evening's readings of 5 and 27 were like, you could consult my review of 15 and 26, written six months ago, and not go too far awry. That is to say that, considered apart from such questions as programming and acoustics, they were excellent. As were 15 and 26. As were 25…24…23…

And that, paradoxically, points to one of the weaknesses of this concerto cycle. Uchida's Cleveland performances, conducted from the keyboard, seem largely of a piece with the superb recordings she made in the late 80s and early 90s with Jeffrey Tate and the English Chamber Orchestra. When, say, Anne-Sophie Mutter revisits music by Vivaldi or Brahms or Mozart that she recorded years ago, it's hard to deny that the artist's relationship with the music has changed—that she has something fundamentally new she wants to express about the score. Uchida's Cleveland Mozart cycle has never, to my ears, had the same sense of purposefulness. If the installments of the cycle were books, they would not be groundbreaking works by a writer you thought you knew, but cozy new volumes in a familiar series.

Still, the series has been impressive. Scarcely a note has gone by without some bit of precise tactile engineering. Yet Uchida’s playing rarely sounds artificial—though she came perilously close toward the end of K. 175’s slow movement. And if there were occasional missteps and hints of disorderliness Thursday evening, there were still more impressive details of execution: the variety of touch Uchida brought to the minor-key variation in K. 382, for example, and the delicately controlled dynamics in the Larghetto of K. 595. The list goes on.

But so, at perhaps too great a length, did this concerto cycle. And, however high the series’ general caliber, one greets with less than unbridled enthusiasm the report that Uchida will return in late 2009 to give more performances of—you guessed it—Mozart concertos. Some concertgoers will welcome the chance to hear these interpretations once again. But others might remember an adage passed down for generations in the Mozart family: that, while it was a great thing to know how to communicate eloquently, it was an equally great thing to know when to stop.

I’m Jerome Crossley for WCLV 104/9. 

Considered Opinions is WCLV's program that reviews performances by Cleveland-area music ensembles. Commentator Jerome Crossley offers an informed and witty perspective on performances by groups that include the Cleveland Orchestra, Opera Cleveland, and Red {an orchestra}. Considered Opinions typically airs at 9.45 a.m., 12.20 p.m., and 5.20 p.m. the Friday following a Cleveland Orchestra concert, and it repeats at 9.45 a.m. on Saturday. Other air-times depend on the schedule of the ensembles reviewed.

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