Mozart’s birthday is coming up on the 27th, as anyone who’s not living under a large rock surely knows. Our calendars reveal considerable activity – performances of several editions of the Requiem in diverse villages and burgs plus various and sundry other scores in school and professional settings throughout the state – and still more events will be announced for later this season and next fall. (We’ll be covering some of these in the next little while, of course.) Many of these offerings are single, stand-alone tributes, but as we noted in October, there’s one big ongoing series that is worthy of special note. It’s at Meredith – where the stops are being pulled out with special vigor this week – and it involves Frank Pittman and Carol Chung in four concerts devoted to the sixteen late sonatas for piano and violin. The second of these programs, presented in Carswell Concert Hall on January 23, featured the Sonatas Nos. 32 in F, K.547 (Für Anfänger); 21 in C, K.296; 17 in G, K.301; and 31 in A, K.526. As before, there is infinite variety in the music – as there was in the performances, too, which hewed to the highest technical and artistic standards (Meredith’s Yamaha notwithstanding – Pittman has pretty much figured out its several quirks). Mozart often gets a bad rap for being so facile, but the deep emotions that were conveyed by these admirable and always-reliable artists made for some truly profound and moving listening. The series continues in March and concludes in April. Music lovers who are not boycotting the Mozart anniversary altogether (there are such unfortunates…) owe it to themselves to hear at least one of these recitals.
About The Author
John Lambert
Since 1977, John W. Lambert, has written reviews and articles published, variously, by The News and Observer, Leader, Spectator, Fanfare, Fi, Independent, CVNC, and CVNA. His studies included violin, piano, voice, and music history. A sketch of his thesis, on the North Carolina Symphony's first 50 years, was published by Greenwood Press, in Symphony Orchestras of the United States: Selected Profiles (ed. Robert R. Craven); and his liner notes for several Toscanini Lps were published by Music and Arts Programs of America, Inc. His latest major publication is The North Carolina Symphony: A History, written in cooperation with Joe A. Mobley, with a foreward by Roy C. Dicks. He is a recipient of the Raleigh Medal of Arts, the Durham Symphony's "Share the Music" Award, and a Triangle Arts Award. Lambert is a member of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections and an avid collector of recordings. Ever mindful of his late critical mentor Nell Hirschberg's oft'-repeated admonition to continue writing (because, as she said, "People die when they use up the number of words allocated to them in their lifetimes"), he hopes to live long enough to annotate "best-available" transfers of all of Toscanini's NBC Symphony broadcasts (1937-54), a listening (and collecting) project he began when he was 11 – a musical journey that is documented in this valedictory article. He cherishes the memory of his time in Uncle Sugar's Canoe Club, including a deployment to Vietnam aboard the Navy's last 8" rapid-fire cruiser, the USS NEWPORT NEWS; he retired after 26+ years of combined active and reserve service, the latter including a substantial hitch in military shipping. His civilian "day jobs" were largely in private-sector and government purchasing and technical writing. He retired as a business officer with NC's Department of Health and Human Services in September 2010. He is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America and serves on the production team of Classical Voice North America. (Revised 10/2022.)