MUSIC REVIEW : Mozart Program Shows Off Early Works

SAN DIEGO — Ideally, a well-planned festival invites excursions on musical paths less traveled. Saturday evening at the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, Mainly Mozart’s second program followed the rule and balanced Mozart’s early Piano Concerto in E-flat, K. 271, with the even earlier Symphony No. 21 in A Major, K. 134. Music director David Atherton’s unhackneyed programming was but the concert’s first virtue.

The second virtue was enlisting pianist Gustavo Romero as the concerto soloist. While he made his Mainly Mozart Festival debut on this program, the San Diego native is hardly unknown to local audiences. More than a Mozart specialist, Romero plays Mozart’s keyboard music with uncommon insight.

In addition to his creamy legato and consistently elegant phrasing, Romero knows how to build his interpretation from the composer’s smallest motifs. With diligent articulation and subtle accent, for example, Romero infused the simple unaccompanied theme at the opening of the Andantino with a lyrical sensibility that radiated throughout the movement. Unlike those pianists who mindlessly dispatch Mozart’s passagework as if to say, “But wait until you hear my Beethoven--it’s smashing!” Romero brought a sense of urgency and mental presence to the concerto’s bravura finale.

Unfortunately, the festival’s Kawai grand piano did not provide the soloist with adequate sonic resources. In the treble range, where the composer outlines his most tender melodies, the instrument sounded particularly thin and shallow. Having heard Romero play eloquently on better pianos many times, this reviewer has no doubt that the Kawai was at fault.

Violist Cynthia Phelps, who was the San Diego Symphony’s acting principal violist several seasons back, served up Johann Hummel’s Viola Fantasy with predictable verve and a burnished sonority. At age 10, Hummel was a pupil of Mozart, and in this Fantasy he quotes an aria from his teacher’s opera “Don Giovanni.” Phelps imparted a sure sense of direction to an otherwise rambling bauble.

As it made clear in last week’s opening concert, the festival orchestra took its task seriously. The response to Atherton’s meticulously detailed A Major Symphony was both solid and stylish, although the horn players besmirched their colleagues’ precise intonation and clean phrasing. Atherton opened the program with a rare Haydn morsel, the Overture to “L’infedelta Delusa.”

The Mainly Mozart Festival continues with a chamber concert at the Old Globe Theatre at 7 tonight .