Star conductor in Graz

Joana Mallwitz’s little dance in the shadow of the violin

Conductor Joana Mallwitz

(Bild: Nicolai Lund)

Star conductor Joana Mallwitz celebrated her Styrian debut at the orchestra concert in the Musikverein Graz. Violin virtuoso Augustin Hadelich outshone the solid Konzerthausorchester Berlin.

Fancy a little dance? Or six of them? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart poured no less than that many vulgar melodies into his work KV 509. The amalgam opened the evening with conductor Joana Mallwitz at the podium of the Berlin orchestra, which also had more dance rhythms up its sleeve with Beethoven's 7th Symphony.

Too rationally dissected
Despite the beauty of Mozart's sound, there was still some criticism that the danceability was dissected too rationally and interpreted with too little feeling - like trying to teach yourself how to swing your hips by reading step sequences from a textbook. This worked better with Beethoven. Here, the down-to-earth pounding of the first movement was still hidden behind a string-heavy melodious sound. However, it was the deliberate slowing down of the tempo in the middle movements that made the brilliant finale shine all the more succinctly.

Highest virtuosity
Despite Joana Mallwitz's remarkable, dancing appearance, the true radiance of the evening came from the violin soloist. The German-American Augustin Hadelich had won over all of the numerous audience members with the solo cadenza of the first movement of Brahms' violin concerto at the latest. The highest virtuosity was paired with even higher musical sensitivity and created a framework of intimate sound speech that made you forget that you were sharing the pleasure of listening with hundreds of others.