New life in an old violin concerto: Francesca Dego casts wisely in Mozart #5

Francesca Dego gave extra animation to Mozart.

 A couple of masterpieces by teenagers bulk large this weekend at Hilbert Circle Theatre as the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra welcomes two fascinating guest artists: conductor Asher Fisch and violinist Francesca Dego. The program's third piece offers insight into Fisch's skills and rapport with an orchestra new to him.

Robert Schumann ascended quickly to mastery as a literary-minded romantic whose calculated maturity got caught up in the mental illness that was to bring him down in middle age. His Overture to "Manfred," put well into the context of the composer's affinities by the program notes (Marianne Williams Tobias), represents his conflicted attitude toward viability in the theater.

The overture survives, amid a clutch of cast-off pieces inspired by Lord Byron's isolated hero — a manic-depressive with obvious resonance for Schumann. The ISO opens this program with the work, and Fisch's regard for it was immediately evident in Friday's performance (there's a second one at 5:30 this afternoon). The inevitable mood swings were well-controlled. The tensile strength in Fisch's podium manner — the clear pulse and the phrasing acumen — served the music well. The control he exerted over the responsive ensemble never got in the way of the score's restless warmth of feeling.

In retrospect, the overture performance amounted to a showcase for qualities Fisch would bring to Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1 in F minor after intermission. The most distinguished symphonist of the 20th century, Shostakovich entered the lists at age 19, receptive to various influences as a student but already showing a flair for orchestral color and dynamic energy that bore his signature.  

In remarks from the podium, Fisch prepared the audience for the variety of expression and melodic thrust laid out in the first movement, in particular the grotesqueness that figures throughout. The different voices making revolving-door entrances were nicely introduced. Small solos are unconventionally laid out, with ad hoc concertino groups forming and dissolving. Chiaroscuro shades flashed before us in the second movement, and Fisch managed shifting tempos expertly. 

Asher Fisch showed mastery of phrasing, tempo, and color.

The soloing became spectacular, but in an oddly foreboding way, in the slow movement. You couldn't help thinking that the young composer, feeling his oats though he was in 1925, might have been nursing feelings of dread as Soviet life narrowed against progressive possibilities: Lenin, having died the year before, was being replaced by a much more repressive leader who was to put Shostakovich and all his artistic compatriots in huge peril over the next decade. 

The symphony's finale seems to blow away such concerns, but the exuberance is shadowed by the irony that often overtakes Shostakovich's triumphant mode. Again, tempo shifts and detailed phrasing, always linked to expressive purposes, characterized the performance: it was good to have a maestro in charge who knows the difference between largo and lento, and can give distinction to the music that  goes with each of those slow tempos in this score. But faster paces dominate, and the layering of textures exhilarates. Robust climaxes were smoothly prepared, mixed amid the recurring surprises.

This orchestra, significantly younger than it was pre-pandemic, sounds as good as ever. It is in excellent shape to be led by a new music director. I hope the musicians are as lucky in the selection as he or she surely will be. 

Dego played the most popular of the five violin concertos Mozart wrote, also at age 19: No. 5 in A major ("Turkish"). Her lean tone drew attention to her agility in the first movement, but more noteworthy was her instinct for question-and-answer phrasing. Within the solo part, one heard continual dialogue. The effect was not overblown, but offered harbingers of Mozart's great operas to come. The tone attained splendor in the cadenza (her own?) becoming postively incandescent: I thought (following Romeo about Juliet): "O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright."

Dego's performance took on a courtly air in the middle movement; her cadenza kept the movement soft-spoken as it paraphrased the melodies with some neatly applied double-stops. Decorative elements were also topnotch in the finale Rondo: Tempo di Minuetto, and especially idiomatic in the "Turkish" episode that gives the piece its nickname. Orchestra and soloist took it at a rowdy pace, which suited Fisch's remark during "Words on Music" that while the minuet was being danced in the salons of Vienna, the Ottoman soldiery was partying just outside the gates. Called back by the larger than usual audience for an encore, Dego obliged with a seductive performance of Paganini's Caprice No. 13.