Melbourne Recital Centre and ANAM| Mostly Mozart – WAM!!
November 3, 2022, Australian Digital Concert Hall
Melbourne Recital Centre and the Australian National Academy of Music (live streamed on Australian Digital Concert Hall) produced an interesting vignette of music focusing on brass instruments from Mozart and earlier under the “Mostly Mozart” banner.
WAM!, an acronym of Mozart’s initials, is a melange of themes from the composer’s best-known trio of Da Ponte operas played by brass dectet.
Peter Adcock, the composer, set out to highlight the beauty of the music by sharing it with ten brass instruments each of which has a solo part and he certainly achieves his aim. Rachel Kelly on tuba has no problem with the famous bottom F in Sarastro’s “O Isis and Osiris” which is more than can be said of most human voices!
One advantage of such concerts is to be exposed to the music of lesser known composers. Few people would have heard of Bohemian composer Georg Neruda but his concerto for trumpet (originally written for corno da caccia – a valveless predecessor of the horn) is very attractive to the ear. Beautifully played by David Elton, it features a sublimely restful slow movement.
Returning to more conventional fare, Eve McEwan gave a spritely performance of Mozart’s second horn concerto. All three movements are in E flat to accommodate the restrictions of the instrument of the time and the soloist handled the tricky final movement cadenza with aplomb.
Finally, the final two movements from Mozart’s Serenade no 9, nicknamed “The Posthorn” after the solo by this instrument in the Minuet which was beautifully handled by Neil Walmsley.
A superbly composed concert and exhilarating to listen to.
