Review: Richmond Symphony
Dorian Wilson conducting
Feb. 6, Bon Air Baptist Church
If you think the instrumental techniques and stylistic nuances brought to 18th-century music by the "historically informed" period-instruments movement are dead wrong 
Wilson, the fifth of nine music-director candidates to appear with the Richmond Symphony, is conducting a program of Mozart and the Haydn brothers, Joseph and Michael, this weekend. The orchestral sound he obtained in the first of two concerts was not markedly different from what we are accustomed to hearing in, say, Mendelssohn.
Tempos were broad, at times quite slow. Accents were blunt. String vibrato was applied generously. There was little dynamic gradation beyond soft, medium and loud. Phrasing in slow movements was lyrical in the romantic manner. Minuets were elegant, with nary a trace of the earthiness of the Ländler, the Austrian folk dance from which the ballroom minuet evolved. It was, in sum, a flashback to Haydn and Mozart as they customarily were played 40 or 50 years ago.
Mozart’s "Jupiter" Symphony (No. 41 in C major, K. 551) takes to this interpretive approach much more readily than the "Mercury" Symphony (No. 43 in E flat major) of Joseph Haydn or the "Andromeda and Perseus" Overture of Michael Haydn.
The Mozart is more richly orchestrated and its themes are grandly declamatory or rhapsodic – sturdy stuff that stands up to the robust treatment it got from Wilson and the symphony players. String tone was full-bodied, gratifyingly so in the cellos and double-basses, and the wind sections were refined and well-balanced outside the full-tilt climaxes.
The works by the Haydns, smaller-scaled products of an earlier stage of classical style, needed sharper accenting, more dynamic variety and a lighter, more transparent orchestral sound.
The program repeats at 3 p.m. Feb. 8 at Blackwell Auditorium, Randolph-Macon College, in Ashland. Tickets: $25. Details: (804) 788-1212; www.richmondsymphony.com
