Mainly Mozart’s 13th annual Spotlight Series kicked off Friday and Saturday, Jan. 25 and 26 at The Neurosciences Institute with subsequent performances Jan. 27 in Carlsbad and Rancho Santa Fe.
With his usual, informative ebullience, flutist Timothy Day, a longtime participant in the Mainly Mozart Festival, presided over the spoken part of the program Friday evening. Day, whom local music fans have watched mature, nattered about the music and the master, Johann Sebastian Bach, to whose works the program was exclusively devoted.
Day took particular care in discussing the first musical selection, Trio Sonata in G, listed as BWV 1038 in the printed program, He said that though such a trio sonata exists, the program notes and movements had nothing to do with the trio we were about to hear, because he, violinist Angela Fuller and pianist Marc Sapiro were playing another trio sonata in G, BWV 1039, which was composed initially for flute and continuo in 1720. No matter. The music was gracious indeed and so was Day, and as the listener sat in the marvelous auditorium listening to this and other works, the genius of Bach washed over her as if for the first time.
In her playing of the Sonata No. 4 in C Minor for Violin and Keyboard, BWV 1017, violinist Fuller proved elegant in bearing and tone quality. Utilizing spare and economical movement of her body, she eschews the current practice of showboating. Only the right arm and the instrument itself do the work. In addition, she is a lovely woman with reddish hair and was attractively garbed in a long, diaphanous frock of sea foam green.
Day and Shapiro played the lighter in character Sonata in E for Flute and Basso Continuo, BWV 1035, and all three artists concluded the program with a refreshing reading of Trio Sonata for Flute, Violin and Continuo from “A Musical Offering,” BWV 1079, written for Frederick the Great.
The next Spotlight Series concert is scheduled Friday and Saturday, Feb. 22 and 23, at The Neurosciences Institute, 10640 John Jay Hopkins Drive. It’s an all-Schumann program with violinist Ida Kavafian, cellist Andrew Shulman and pianist Anne-Marie McDermott. Looking ahead, the 20th anniversary Mainly Mozart Festival kicks off June 10 at the newly reopened Balboa Theatre with the marvelous pianist John Lill playing all five of Beethoven’s concertos with the Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra under the baton of David Atherton.
For information, visit www.mainlymozart.org or phone (619) 239-0100.
