Cleveland Orchestra @ Severance Hall, 4/15

Everyone (it seems) loves Mitsuko and Mozart. Thursday night a packed Severance Hall showed the love to visiting pianist Mitsuko Uchida and to the ever-inventive W. A. Mozart, the boy genius who died way too young. The all-Mozart program opened with Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K466, a work whose somber opening passages were soon eclipsed by breaking melodic patterns and a piano cadenza that evoked thoughts of Beethoven.

Soloist Uchida, conducting from the piano, wore a diaphanous blue jacket that made her look like a magician summoning up the spirits. After intermission, she again soloed and conducted Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat major, K595. She conveyed a sense of easy grace throughout both pieces, taking both stampeding cascades of notes and passages (in No. 27) that sounded as if the ghost of Jerry Lee Lewis joined her on the keyboard.

A small orchestral ensemble, led by concertmaster William Preucil, played a conversational Divertimento for Strings in D major, K 136, between the two piano works. Watching the exchange and the play between sections--everyone played standing, shifting slightly--showed what a lively dance good music, extremely well played, can be. It was, as expected with Uchida and the orchestra when they collaborate, a satisfying musical event.

One sad note began the night when the orchestra played the Air from Bach's Suite No. #3 in D major in honor of second violinist Leon Lazarev (1938--2010) who died unexpectedly the week before.

Laura Kennelly is a freelance arts journalist, a member of the Music Critics Association of North America, and an associate editor of BACH, a scholarly journal devoted to J. S. Bach and his circle.

Listening to and learning more about music has been a life-long passion. She knows there’s no better place to do that than the Cleveland area.