This year’s series observes bicentennial of Franz Liszt
By Charlene Baldridge | SDUN Reporter
Since 1989, an annual gathering of renowned soloists and top orchestral players from around the nation, the 23rd Mainly Mozart Festival, has taken place June 7-18 in two venues. This year, there are four concerts at downtown San Diego’s Balboa Theatre and three at La Jolla’s Neurosciences Institute.
Artistic director David Atherton, co-founder (with Nancy Laturno Bojanic) of Mainly Mozart, speaks with particular relish of longtime concertmasters William Preucil and Martin Chalifour. The duo usually sit next to one other (“one, two”) in the violin section of the 37-member Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra, exchanging triumphant, amused glances as they make the kind of snappy transitions for which composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is known.
“That’s one of the joys of Mainly Mozart,” Atherton says. “The artists on stage are not afraid to smile.”
Neither are the audience members, who are accustomed to both the players’ excellence as well as the springy little dance steps Atherton sometimes performs on the podium. It’s a far cry from a stuffy concert chamber music concert. These players, many having missed only one or two years since Mainly Mozart’s early concert series at the Old Globe (1989-’90), enjoy playing together, and the feeling is infectious.
Lest one think that San Diego’s Mainly Mozart Festival concerns the music of Mozart alone, this year the festival observes the bicentennial of Franz Liszt as well. Though Mozart and Liszt may predominate, their works are mixed with orchestral and chamber music by J.C. Bach, Edvard Grieg, Franz Joseph Haydn, Felix Mendelssohn, Joaquin Rodrigo, Camille Saint-Saëns, Igor Stravinski, and Antonio Vivaldi. It’s what the maestro describes as a “delightful mix.”
Among the guest soloists this season are renowned pianist Misha Dichter, in recital with his wife, Cipa Dichter, Tues., June 7, at The Neurosciences Institute. Also at Neurosciences, Preucil and acclaimed pianist Anton Nel perform works by Mozart, with the orchestra under Atherton’s baton, Thurs., June 9. Included that evening is Vivaldi’s popular “The Four Seasons.” At the Balboa Theatre Sat., June 11, extraordinary pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, who becomes Mainly Mozart’s chamber music curator in 2012, turns in a command performance of the Haydn D Major concerto, which was her first meeting with Atherton and Mainly Mozart in 1996. “It was a dream, like nothing I’d had experienced before like fire and electricity,” she says.
Additional concerts include the Tues., June 14 Balboa Theatre appearance of pianist Adam Neiman with the orchestra; the Thurs., June 16 performance of Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” by esteemed guitarist Angel Romero; the Fri., June 17 Neurosciences duo recital by violinist James Ehnes and pianist Orion Weiss; and at the Balboa Sat., June 18, the concluding concert with Ehnes playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor with Atherton and the Festival Orchestra. All concerts begin at 7:30 p.m. For additional programming details, visit: mainlymozart.org or phone (619) 239-0100, ext. 2.
