Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: String and Flute Quartet from the Trio in E-flat Major, K. 498 (Kegelstatt)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581
Quatuor Fidelio
Philippe Bernold: Flute
Patrick Messina: Clarinet
After two slightly chilly, but still richly rewarding, outdoor concerts as part of the Festival Mozart dans la Drôme, and a most welcome night off, on Wednesday evening my mom and I were back on the road and heading to Montboucher-sur-Jabron, another nearby medieval village whose close proximity of Montélimar and lack of special attractions, except maybe for the madonna and child statue overlooking the main street from the top of her tower, make it feel more like a suburb than an independent entity. But we were not there to play tourists anyway, and this time at least, the concert would take place in the safe environment of the main local church at the totally civilized time of 7:00 PM.
The irony was that, once there, the weather was so gorgeous that we had no desire to be stuck in a closed space for a couple of hours, and only the perspective of hearing an all-Mozart feast titled “Mozart, de Milan à Vienne” (Mozart, from Milan to Vienna), which could only appeal to the die-hard purists in us, made us step inside the large and beautifully renovated church, and take our seats among another tightly packed audience.
After the usual welcome speeches, the concert started with Mozart’s String Quartet No. 4 in C Major, which the composer wrote in 1773 when he was still a teenager traveling through Italy, including Milan, with his father. It is in fact a delightfully sparkling piece, bristling with the insouciance of youth and the mastery brought by early artistic maturity. The young ladies of the Quatuor Fidelio looked barely older than Mozart was then, and they readily displayed the same considerable amount of talent, poise and ambition in playing as he did in composing.
Unlike too many other speech makers, the festival’s artistic director Philippe Bernold never wastes anybody’s time. And he did not on Wednesday evening either as he explained how he had painstakingly tracked down the score of Mozart’s String and Flute Quartet from the Trio in E-flat Major to an old printing press in Germany, which has since become a music instruments store while still keeping its original setup upstairs, and had it printed on fancy paper like in the good old days. It was an expensive endeavor, for sure, but, as he rightly pointed out, anything for Mozart.
And since he had the bright idea to include the piece on Wednesday’s program, we had a chance to hear it by three members of Quatuor Fidelio and Bernold himself. The Kegelstatt Trio, which features the unusual combination of piano, viola and clarinet, was inspired by an obviously very enjoyable outdoor bowling game in Vienna on August 5, 1786, which the now four musicians vividly described in all its unadulterated merriment. It was particularly nice to see Bernold put on his flutist’s hat and to hear that, besides his other jobs as artistic director, conductor and professor at the Paris Conservatory, he remains a musician at heart.
After intermission came another work written by Mozart, although this one came out in 1789 in Vienna, when he was at the top of his game and churning out masterpiece after masterpiece. Even though I am not particularly fond of the clarinet, I’ll be the first to admit that the Clarinet Quintet in A Major is a dazzling achievement. And then, of course, when you have a soloist as accomplished as Patrick Messina, the Orchestra National de France's long-time principal clarinetist, play it in front if you, well, all you can do is sit back and enjoy, and I did.
In his speech, Bernold had also mentioned that if the official program was all-Mozart, the encore would be up to us, kind of. So we loudly asked for it, and we eventually got to relish an exquisitely gentle Shostakovitch treat that had the merit of involving all the musicians that had played for us, and of ending the evening on a wonderfully soothing note.
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