Saturday night’s installment of the 2007 Mainly Mozart Festival, featuring artistic director David Atherton and the festival chamber orchestra, would be more correctly described as only slightly Mozart. Once maestro Atherton and his well-disciplined ensemble dispatched a bristling, if hard-edged, reading of Mozart’s Overture to “Don Giovanni” at the program’s opening, that was the last we heard of Amadeus. The remainder of the evening was devoted to generous portions of Mendelssohn and Schubert, as well as two ingratiating gems from the early 20^th century, Ralph Vaughn Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” and Frederick Delius’ “Summer Night on the River.” In light of this pleasantly varied fare and the opportunity to hear the evening’s featured soloists, the dashing young Russian pianist Kirill Gerstein and William Preucil—the festival’s longstanding concertmaster—no one I encountered was feeling Mozart-deprived.

Let’s begin with Gerstein, who had the Qualcomm Hall audience (and this critic) in the palm of his hand with a scintillating—but never overplayed—account of Felix Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concert in G Minor. This is a piece that can easily overstay its welcome: the piano almost never relents (e.g., it waits impatiently for the composer’s brass fanfares between the movements), hogging all the attention with effusive runs and decorations that suggest some Victorian dandy sporting too much lace and velvet frippery for polite company. Yet, Gerstein knew exactly how to approach this challenge. When the score called for power, such as the lightning parallel octave runs, he unleashed his virtuoso technique without the slightest decrease of clarity and attack. When Mendelssohn turned lyrical, Gerstein pulled back quickly to a light, almost Mozartean touch, fluid and deftly punctuated. In the middle movement, his elegant phrasing muted the sentimental harmonic vocabulary of which the young Mendelssohn (he was all of 22 when he wrote the concerto) was enamored. Although Gerstein is not much older that the composer was when he wrote the piece, he displays a welcome maturity of judgment in his playing, a sense of proportion that keeps the focus on the music and not the interpreter. Any comparison to a certain popular young Asian piano virtuoso is intended.

William Preucil’s violin solo in Vaughan Williams’ ”The Lark Ascending” was a masterful as you are likely to hear in a live performance: long, shimmering lines of seamless beauty suggesting a rhapsodic idyll. Preucil demonstrated more than mere control; he revealed the vast emotional aspiration that lurks beneath the work’s placid surface and invited us to savor it with him. Atherton and the orchestra supported him at every turn with plush understatement. This piece is a favorite—some might say a cliché—of classical radio stations, but it is anything but overplayed in the concert hall. Perhaps it’s not showy enough for visiting violin virtuosi, but is stands out as a winning contribution to the violin repertory that deserves a place on stage as well as on the air.

This was my first experience of the new Qualcomm Hall, and only the second of the Mainly Mozart concerts there. Several years ago, when La Jolla’s Neurosciences Institute unveiled its absolute gem of a combination lecture hall-recital hall (perhaps better described as a recital hall barely impersonating a lecture hall), the formula seemed almost too easy. If a thriving company with a passion for musical performance needs a lecture hall on its premises, simply instruct the architect to include a generous stage, provide clear sight lines, and don’t forget to throw in great acoustics. Alas, nothing is that simple. Qualcomm Hall certainly has good sight lines and an ample stage, one appropriately lined with sound-reflecting wood paneling. But based on hearing this performance of a 30-piece chamber orchestra, the hall is not hospitable to music performance of this scope.

Unlike the hall at the Neurosciences Institute, whose sonic ambience is warm and uncannily present, Qualcomm Hall is dry and brittle, causing the orchestra to sound unnaturally thin and even strident when it plays forte or above. This was all too evident in Schubert’s Symphony No. 3 in D Major, notably the outer movements. All the intended brio of the opening movement, which Atherton conducted with appropriate gusto, sounded cramped and forced, because the sound simply had insufficient room in which to bloom. The hall is not a large room, and considering that it has a small balcony, it has an unfortunately low ceiling. How I wished for those “good old days” when the Mainly Mozart orchestra played in the downtown Spreckels Auditorium, a capacious, old-fashioned hall where Atherton’s players sounded full and expansive. Spreckels’ physical condition may have been slightly dowdy, but it was a luxurious space in which to hear live performance.

Perhaps Qualcomm Hall will prove a better match for chamber music, e. g. a string quartet or piano trio. But for this chamber orchestra of virtuoso players, including trumpets and timpani, the room was a major disappointment. Worst of all, its acoustics reminded me of another dispiriting local venue, the Smith Recital Hall at San Diego State University.

PROGRAM:

Mozart, Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527

Delius, "Summer Night on the River"

Mendelssohn, Piano Concerto no. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25

Vaughn Williams, "The Lark Ascending"

Schubert, Symphony No. 3 in D Major, D. 200