Ax, Mozart and Ravel at the Schermerhorn
On the snowy second weekend of 2025 the Nashville Symphony offered a concert consisting of two works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Overture to Cosi fan tutte (1790), and the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466 (1785) performed by the virtuosic and Nashville regular Emanuel “Manny” Ax, as well as Maurice Ravel’s epic Daphnis et Chloé (1912). Although the pairing of these works seems somewhat arbitrary and somewhat off balance, it was a beautiful and virtuosic evening.
When I heard the first big C major chord at the opening of the introduction to the Overture to Cosi, especially as Titus Underwood’s oboe drifted through Laura Turner’s hall, I was thinking about how much it took for the symphony to actually be at this moment. Last year’s annual impact report (of 2023) indicates that the organization employs 83 full-time musicians. These are a diverse group of artists at the very top of their game, performing in an internationally recognized ensemble (14 Grammys Awards!). It is hard to overestimate the amount of positive impact that these wonderful artists and their families have on the Nashville culture simply by living here. And yet, obstacles for the ensemble abound: floods, pandemics, funding fiascos, crazy clarinetists, bankruptcies (does anyone remember the “Nashville Platinum” debacle?), layoffs, those darn birds, and the disfunction at Metro Arts.
As an arts organization, decisions, sometimes ugly decisions, must be made with an eye towards the good of the ensemble and the community. Still, the instrument petting zoos, the community concerts, the chamber concerts, the education and the outreach continue. Even the symphony’s administration, many of them artists themselves, contribute to our city. This is a growing and beautiful city of arts and the Nashville Symphony is a very important part of that movement. That’s what I was dwelling on during Mozart’s sunny C major opening–it takes a kind of optimism akin to high Viennese Classicism to press onward in the face of these obstacles, and in such a wonderful manner, the music continues. As an overture, Cosi isn’t nearly as formally innovative as, for instance, was his overture to Don Giovanni from a couple of years earlier. However, dramatically it (like the opera it comes from) is tremendously cathartic—one of those striking optimistic statements that are often at the center of Mozart’s genius—emotionally, this was the brightest moment of the evening and the orchestra performed wonderfully.
The D minor concerto was written five years earlier than the overture, when Mozart had arrived in Vienna and was quickly making a name for himself. He had integrated himself into the “scene” of Europe’s music city and it’s most progressive and enlightened organization, the Masons. On the night of its premiere, February 11, 1785, Mozart played the solo part and directed the orchestra. That evening, after the concert, he rushed back to his apartment with his father for a quartet party where the great composer Franz Josef Haydn, and Antonio and Bartolomeo Tinti (all Masons) would join him in playing through some of the quartets that Mozart had recently dedicated to Haydn. It was during that evening that Haydn turned to Leopold (Mozart’s father) and proclaimed,
“I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition.”
It is difficult to know what aspects of Mozart’s work that Haydn was referring to, scholars have debated ad nauseum, but in reference to the Concerto, it is easy to identify the aspects that we like–the symmetry, the way the d minor key (the key of Don Giovanni) is meted out through the movement, or how, to quote Authur Hutchings, “the ritornello organization constantly holds the passion of the D minor concerto in leash.” It is easy to get caught up in the green shoots of romanticism in this piece, but these are always tempered by Mozart’s enduring classicism.
On Thursday, Ukrainian-born virtuoso Emanuel Ax proved himself again to be a world class interpreter of Mozart. His hands, held close, with fingers curved and a gentle expression of concentration on his face, he appropriately placed the music just as close to Bach as it was to Liszt. His sense of classical restraint in the beauty of the melody was well balanced against Guerrero’s long, sweeping lines. No wonder that Beethoven, the composer who lived on the fence between the classical and romantic, loved this piece. The storm in the second movement’s romanze presages Beethoven’s Pastoral, just as the coda in D major is almost heroic. But like the era’s Kabinettskriege, these passions were fiercely controlled by form, convention and expectation.
After the standing ovations, Ax sat back down to the piano for an encore, I think it was a Lieder ohne Worte? But it was beautiful, and after he quickly grabbed concertmaster Peter Otto and hustled off stage—the Ravel is long!
After intermission, Tucker Biddlecombe’s Nashville Symphony Chorus joined the symphony for a rapturous performance of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. Biddlecombe’s wordless choir performed with an excellent blend (especially for their huge number—the program lists 50 sopranos alone!), and Guerrero seemed to be in his element with Ravel’s lush impressionist harmonies. The arrival of the pirates and the sound of the wind machine were fun.
When it comes to scale, this is perhaps the largest work that Ravel composed, and the handling of the sheer, dreamy, orchestral colors was remarkable. To be honest though, on a workday, an hour of rich impressionistic harmonies from a huge orchestra just before bedtime is difficult. The supertitles also gave the performance of this “choreographic symphony” an awkward sort of “blow by blow” telling of the narrative. Finally, overall, it felt as though there was very little connection or synergy between the Mozart and the Ravel which left me with the feeling that the evening was just a little off balance. The Nashville Symphony returns on January 24-26 with Julia Wolfe’s Flower Power and Beethoven’s Seventh.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Joseph E. Morgan is a father of two, husband, teacher and recovering guitarist in Middle Tennessee.
