Symphony No 73 (La Chasse) - Haydn
Piano Concerto in B flat K456 - Mozart
Piano Concerto in C K503 - Mozart
Judging by size of attendance and enthusiasm of audience response, Hugh Tinney's three-year series of the complete Mozart piano concertos with the Orchestra of St Cecilia, now in its final leg, has already become something of an institution. As a musical enterprise it's a venture which seems to have changed significantly in character with the passing of time. Finely-proportioned scaling, tonal refinement and expressive poise, which I recall as defining Tinney's approach to Mozart in the early concerts, have been replaced with an altogether breezier approach, expressing itself through more angular shaping, generally louder playing, and an abandonment of anything on the lines of chamber music style in favour of a more robust efficiency.
The current style might be interpreted as a response over time to the narrow dynamic range of the OSC under Geoffrey Spratt; the playing is tidier than I remember earlier on, but still rarely balances with the soloist in a context-sensitive manner. Or it could be a response to Tinney's own decision to play from the music - the blocking of direct sound from strings and soundboard can encourage a player used to doing concertos without a music desk to seek out higher dynamics.
Whatever the cause, a series that started out with many moments of promising magic, is now trading more securely in an altogether plainer expressive domain.
The music, certainly in the two concertos heard on Tuesday, bears the approach quite well, indeed, there are probably those who would argue that the arresting rhythm and trumpets and drums of K503 positively invite it. Myself, I couldn't help hankering after the greater refinement and thoughtfulness that was promised in the series' early stages and is now only sporadically delivered in the slow movements.
Spratt's handling of the opening Haydn symphony, La Chasse, had an amiability that eschewed sharpness of definition, producing results that seemed overly anaemic for a composer of such rich invention as Haydn.
