The premier chamber music concert in Qualcomm Hall took place June 17 during the Mainly Mozart Festival. The first half of the concert was given over to the festival’s namesake, and the second half devoted to another composer who died far too soon—Mendelssohn (38 years vs. Mozart’s 35).

One thing that didn’t die in Qualcomm Hall was the music. Seated in the back section on the main floor (behind the railing), the new hall gave the musicians a warm sound, but imparted too much reverb for my taste. As such, it’s a better concert space than Mandeville Auditorium or Sherwood Hall, but the Neurosciences Institute (for its unmatched acoustics) and the Athenaeum (for its intimacy) remain the two best spaces in San Diego to hear chamber music.

Joshua Smith was the flutist in Mozart’s Flute Quartet no. 1 in D, K. 285. His musicianship was superb, his velvet tone never faltered, and he had admirable accompanists in Marie Berard, Chiara Kingsley Dieguez, and Sarah Cleveland on violin, viola, and cello respectively.

Next came Mozart’s Divertimento in F, K. 522 (A Musical Joke). More than his other contemporaries, Mozart had a fondness for metamusic. Think of the three bands playing in three different meters simultaneously in Don Giovanni, or Mozart giving himself a shout out by having Leporello comment, “This piece I know too well,” when Non piu andrai from Marriage of Figaro pops up during Don Giovanni’s dinner.

Mozart’s humor in K. 522 is patently obvious to the ear, but in an attempt to make it even more apparent, the musicians, perhaps taking their cue from an Ian Campbell opera buffa production, decided to yuk it up with a lot of slapstick. The audience seemed to genuinely appreciate this extra nonsense. If this were any other work of Mozart’s (except maybe his scatological canons), these antics would be intolerable, but somehow the musical mugging fit the piece.

The first violin part is a parody of a parochial temperamental first violinist, stealing emptily virtuosic solos when he can, sometimes at the expense of playing disastrously wrong notes. William Preucil assumed this role with panache. In the minuet, Preucil delayed the endings of musical phrases to hilarious lengths, stretching out the punctuations to great comic effect.

At the conclusion of the minuet, the horn players let out a loud “Whew!,’ dropped their horns, and read what appeared to be men’s magazines and drank beers during the slow movement. Later in the movement, the stage door opened, and out popped Chiara Kingsley Dieguez wearing a black French maid outfit, complete with matching fuck-me pumps. Kingsley Dieguez likely has a solid career as a violist ahead of her, but in case it doesn’t pan out, this shapely lass can pull down some major chedda dressing up as a French maid.

After delivering more beers to the horns, Kingsley Dieguez brushed the bassist’s shoulder with her cleaning cloth. Her intent as she approached the chrome-domed Preucil was fairly obvious, but she still got a big laugh when she buffed his cueball.

Despite the onstage silliness, the performers all gave the Divertimento the same musical attention and care they provided to the other works on the program.

Mozart composed symphonies, sonatas, and even operas in his youth, but young Wolfgang never wrote anything as grand as Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings, written when Felix was 16. It’s doubtful that during his lifetime Mendelssohn experienced the technical perfection and the big, full tones produced by the strings Sunday evening. With William Preucil as first violin, San Diego’s own Brian Chen as first viola, and Christopher French as first cello, eight amazing gentlemen and ladies gave a marvelous account of Mendelssohn’s precocious masterpiece.

For a copy of the program, click here.