{"id":108003,"date":"2024-09-30T11:42:09","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T15:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=108003"},"modified":"2024-09-30T11:44:40","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T15:44:40","slug":"scrutiny-rachel-podger-tafelmusik-make-mozart-exhilarating-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2024\/09\/30\/scrutiny-rachel-podger-tafelmusik-make-mozart-exhilarating-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Rachel Podger And Tafelmusik Make Mozart An Exhilarating Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Violinist
Violinist and Principal Guest Director Rachel Podger performs with Tafelmusik Orchestra in the Mozart Jupiter program, September 2024 (Photo: Dahlia Katz)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tafelmusik: Mozart Jupiter | Mozart: Entractes from Thamos, King of Egypt\u00a0\u00a0; Violin Concerto no. 2 in D Major\u00a0\u00a0; Symphony no. 41 in C Major \u201cJupiter\u201d. Rachel Podger, violin, Principal Guest Director & Tafelmusik. Sept. 27 (also 28 & 29) at Koerner Hall. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Mozart\u2019s music, often pigeonholed as epitome of grace and beauty, has become such a mainstay that it tends to bring comfort, familiarity, and their conspiratorial friend: complacency. Prolific from a tender childhood, Mozart wrote over 600 works, the top 50 hits heard literally everywhere, in movies old and new, as the wait-music for a customer service call, ringtones: one cannot escape it.<\/p>\n

Tafelmusik\u2019s usual baroque programming features a kaleidoscope of riches, collections of many different works from different composers, carefully curated like a Dutch still life painting. They do present simpler programming at times, such as Beethoven symphonies, but presenting an all-Mozart program with two lesser-hits: Incidental music from Thamos, King of Egypt, and the \u2018little concerto\u2019 in D major, K. 211, was a conscious and bold decision.<\/p>\n

Rachel Podger, in a red dress, was a tour de force from the moment she walked onto the stage. Turning toward the ensemble with her upbeat, Podger and Tafelmusik tore through Mozart\u2019s drama. The characteristic timbre of period instruments\u2014 sinewy, with consonants, and a judicious use of vibrato, conveyed many subtleties and details that are simply not possible from large modern ensembles \u2014 and with excellent acoustic in Koerner, the round, richness of the usual renditions of Mozart we have got so used to, turned into a different experience.<\/p>\n

\"Violinist
Violinist and Principal Guest Director Rachel Podger performs with Tafelmusik Orchestra in the Mozart Jupiter program, September 2024 (Photo: Dahlia Katz)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Known for her yoga-inspired BOGA training: (Bow + Yoga), Podger is a physically active performer, engaging her entire body from head to toe, and to the fingertips, to express and execute. An ensemble of 30 persons needs a synergy to be together, and her physical presence, from facial to body gestures, felt sincere, clearly reciprocated from the ensemble, returning that energy with generous physical expression.<\/p>\n

As the physical expressivity connected Podger and Tafelmusik, that synergy brought the audience to respond \u2014 we chuckled, exhaled, and our eyes moved, as they often do, into an inward personal space, where we keep beauty, in our minds, just for ourselves.<\/p>\n

The ensemble played with technical facility and conviction. Especially for the big finisher, the \u201cJupiter\u201d symphony, the passages from different woodwinds were beautiful. While modern symphonic playing heavily focuses on being matched as close as possible from one instrument to another, for example, the concept of \u2018flobo,\u2019 where the flute and oboe merge into a singular, inseparable sound, Tafelmusik highlighted the importance and the very reason of orchestral voicing: the differences, which heightened the structural clarity, and the inherent beauty of each instrument. Sandra Miller, on flute, nuanced and woody, was quite a treat.<\/p>\n

Bolstering by the two horns, trumpets and timpani were played with great energy and colouration. The tempi in general might have shocked a few, yet were exhilarating \u2014 Tafelmusik was in fine form, where passages flowed without excess baggage, things were \u2018spoken\u2019, accentuated with rich variety in string sound production, and use of vibrato as a truly expressive device.<\/p>\n

\"Violinist
Violinist and Principal Guest Director Rachel Podger performs with Tafelmusik Orchestra in the Mozart Jupiter program, September 2024 (Photo: Dahlia Katz)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The best takeaway from this concert was rediscovering what is possible, from the text we all thought we knew so well. Mozart\u2019s association with elegance has become a cliche, yet with its universal acceptance, comes blindness \u2014 we get dull toward things through familiarity, and we talk the talk, but often forget what this really means, and can mean. Graceful is another word \u2014 Mozart is always graceful, we say. But what is being graceful, in our time where fracturing to the smallest indivisible units, and drive for efficiency dominates every facet of life?<\/p>\n

Podger and Tafelmusik breathed and spoke through the score, and gave themselves, and us, the space to be human. To follow the soundscape that is much closer to speech, where things are not confused by the constant present of big, long, vowels and constant vibratos (following that: bigger, richer is better philosophy), to be offered time to receive the dramatic gesture and to be ready to reciprocate, rather than a shove-and-snatch, the ease that came from the performers \u2014 that this isn\u2019t about conquest of difficulties, but of creating a chance to be emotional, to be unrealistically simple.<\/p>\n

And we were energized.<\/p>\n

The audience left their seats, talking and gesturing in excitement \u2014 like champagne bubbles, we left the hall with fizz, each step a little lighter, humming through the night as we dispersed. We were charmed with this Mozart performance \u2014 simple, elegant, and beautiful. This is the biggest gift of life: total engagement.<\/p>\n

It is exciting to see what will be possible for Podger\u2019s second concert with Tafelmusik: Brilliant Baroque, at the end of January 2025.<\/p>\n

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Tafelmusik and violinist Rachel Podger’s all-Mozart program with lesser known hits was a conscious and bold decision that lit up with exuberant energy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":108005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40967,10,76,19,52,63,68],"tags":[2749,3224],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/09\/Copy-of-REVIEW-80.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-s5Z","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108003"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108003"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108010,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108003\/revisions\/108010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108003"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=108003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}