Israel Festival 2020 - "Salzburg in Ein Kerem", Mozart works for two and three pianos

 

 Dror and Shir Semmel. Photo: Dan Porges

The “Salzburg in Ein Kerem” series, taking place in September 2020 at the Eden-Tamir Music Center, Jerusalem, was a part of the 2020 Israel Festival. The Ein Kerem concerts were held in memory of pianist, composer, teacher, and lecturer Prof. Alexander Tamir who, together with pianist Bracha Eden, founded the Eden-Tamir Music Center in 1968, the venue remaining a beehive of musical activity in the picturesque Ein Kerem neighborhood. The Israel Festival and the Eden-Tamir Center were honoured to celebrate Tamir’s spirit and legacy with “Salzburg in Ein Kerem” - four concerts featuring compositions by W.A.Mozart and his contemporaries, performed by Ensemble Millennium, Assaf Sommer, the Toscanini Quartet with Jonathan Hadas, Eyal Kless, Ron Regev, Ron Trachtman and the Jerusalem Piano Duo (Shir Semmel, Dror Semmel). The importance of the works performed at these concerts is that they formed a pivotal part of Alexander Tamir’s life and career. This writer attended the concert on September 12th, a program of Mozart works featuring two- and three pianos with string quartet.

 

The arrangement we heard of Mozart’s K.365 Concerto in E-flat major for two pianos and string quartet was made by Dror Semmel, who now directs the Eden-Tamir Music Center. Joining him in the performance was pianist Shir Semmel and members of the Millennium Ensemble -  violinists Yevgenia Pikorsky and Asaf Maoz, Dima Ratush-viola and Felix Nemirovsky-’cello. Although the music that Mozart wrote for more than one pianist was usually designed to be played by him and some wealthy patron or outstanding pupil, it was probably inevitable that he would compose a double concerto  expressly to be performed together with his sister Nannerl (Maria Anna). So it was that the  E-flat major concerto, written in the late 1770s, was intended for the Mozart sibling duo, now grown up and no longer going on the road. The piano parts  are equally assigned, resulting in the fact that there is, in effect, no first- and  second solo role, demonstrating that Nannerl must have been every bit as virtuosic a pianist as her brother. The work was also performed by a sibling duo at the Ein Kerem concert, Shir and Dror Semmel, who shared the dialogue between them in countless different ways, engaging in its fleeting scales, exuberant Alberti bass lines and sparkling trills. There was clear concensus between the pianists, subtlety of expression and crystal-clear fingerwork, their use of the sustaining pedal discreet. Moving into new keys, they took the opportunity to create new colour. Their reading of the slow movement was noble and stately, personal and communicative, with Mozart’s enigmatic  use of “wrong” (dissonant) notes  in exposed piano passages never failing to take the listener by surprise!

 

In 1773, the Lodrons and the Mozarts became neighbors when the Mozarts moved into the famous Dancing-Master’s House, Salzburg, resulting in many happy shared musical events. Mozart’s Concerto in F major for three pianos K.242, “Lodron” is almost the signature work for the Eden-Tamir Center and not just due to the fact that the hall boasts three fine pianos. In 1776, Mozart dedicated his seventh piano concerto to “Her Excellency, Her Ladyship, the Countess Lodron … and her daughters, their Ladyships the Countesses Aloysia and Giuseppa.” Each of the three piano roles differs in its technical demands to suit the varying abilities of each of the players, with the first part moderately difficult, attesting to the Countess’s maternal exemplarity - an indication of the perfect woman in late 18th-century ideology. The second part affirms Aloysia’s skill, with the third part being simpler to be played by Giuseppa, the youngest daughter. (In 1780, Mozart himself  played this concerto  in Salzburg, but rearranged  for two pianos. It is thought that the original second performer of this version was Mozart’s sister.)  Mozart’s score calls for two oboes, two horns, strings; we heard J. Kowalewski’s setting of it for three pianos and strings at the  Ein Kerem concert. For the solo roles, Shir and Dror Semmel were joined by Ron Trachtman. The three pianists communicated the work’s sense of well-being via  phrases emerging in streamlined seamlessness, this being no coincidence. The 20-year-old Mozart’s sense of jocularity is present in the fact that the musical line is often divided between the three players quite arbitrarily: one piano continues what another has started and the third will conclude. The listener may be unaware of  this practice, however, with only the pianists themselves knowing what Mozart is up to! The work’s lighthearted nature has garnered it some derogatory commentary, with Alfred Einstein even suggesting we should “not concern ourselves further with the purely galant Concerto for Three Pianos”. Per contra, the Semmels, Trachtman and the Millennium players created a performance that was totally charming, delicate, pleasantly poetic and entertaining, giving expression to the core of close teamwork at hand and to the composer’s intentions of making his three lady students shine in the presence of their guests.

 

The concert concluded with Michael Zartsekel’s setting for three pianos of the first movement of Mozart’s Symphony No.40 in G minor. One of the composer’s three last symphonies, it was written in the summer of 1788. Mozart, burdened by financial worries, his wife’s illness and the lack of success of “Don Giovanni” at the Vienna Opera, was, on the other hand, free of the constraints of writing under commission. He  was able to be freely innovative, producing a work of unique originality and intensity. Despite the lack of orchestral timbres, the artists performing at the Eden-Tamir Center enlisted diverse pianistic timbres and techniques to colour the scene. This worked well. The pianists engaged in articulate layering, performing with freshness and energy and avoiding banal sentimentality, then to take the listener into more mysterious regions of the soul in the movement’s development section. Interestingly, Einstein had referred to Symphony No.40 as a “fatalistic piece of chamber music.” 

 

The concert was an uplifting experience for both the audience at the Eden-Tamir Music Center and for those people viewing the concert on live streaming. It seems the “Mozart effect” has been dismissed but there is no ignoring the joy generated by Mozart’s music, with its sparkle of good cheer, exquisite melodic shaping and its ideal combination of lyricism and Classical restraint.