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Concerts Make Most Of Mozart

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By KURT LOFT, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 1, 2008

Updated: 12/31/2007 05:11 pm

TAMPA - Imagine going through life without ever hearing a Mozart symphony.

Gunther Herbig hopes to prevent such a tragedy when he leads The Florida Orchestra in three performances of the composer's Symphony No. 41, the famed "Jupiter."

For some who attend one of the upcoming programs, it will be their initial taste of Mozart. For others, it will be part of an endlessly joyful cycle.

The newcomers, Herbig says, are targets for enlightenment.

"There are people who are hearing Mozart for the first time, and that's something I always keep in my mind," he says.

"I tell the musicians, 'You have played this 50 times, but for some in the audience, it will be their very, very first encounter with this masterpiece. So you should put everything into it to give them this overwhelming experience.'"

The "Jupiter" is Mozart's final symphony, a culmination of the form at the time it was completed in 1788. Although written quickly, the symphony is a model of liquid grace and immense complexity, of perfectly placed accents and rhythmic shifts, of what the English critic Donald Francis Tovey called "the final subtlety of an immensely experienced artist."

It also stands up to time. Mozart's last three symphonies, all written in a single summer, are bedrocks of the concert hall and most likely will remain popular in another 200 years.

"Mozart doesn't seem to age, unlike other composers we see in our own time, composers who were leading names of the 20th century," says Herbig, who also will conduct the Symphony No. 1 of Jan Sibelius this weekend.

"With Mozart, it's different. The incredible mastery of all the musical details and the sheer beauty of how he expresses what he has to say means he still speaks of our time."

ON STAGE

The Florida Orchestra
WHEN AND WHERE: Friday, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa; Saturday, Mahaffey Theater, 400 First St. S., St. Petersburg; Monday, Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater; each night at 8; (note that the normal Sunday concert has moved to Monday).

TICKETS: $19 to $54; (813) 286-2403

ON STAGE

Reporter Kurt Loft can be reached at (813) 259-7570 or kloft@tampatrib.com.

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