Kritik (ganzer Text)

Of all the tributes to Mozart for the 250th anniversary of his birth, none could be more exciting and deeply, seriously satisfying than Tuesday's recital by Paul Badura-Skoda. That's not just because the Viennese pianist, a star steadily since his 1949 debut, is well-known as a Mozart scholar. It's not only because Badura-Skoda performed the final concert of Central Florida Cultural Endeavors' "Great Masters Anniversary" series, on both a fortepiano, the instrument Mozart himself used, and a modern piano to dazzle his News-Journal Center audience. It was due, most of all, to the range of emotions he found and expressed in a program that ranged from the witty, playful Variations on a Minuet by Duport and on to works whose emotional depth anticipate Beethoven and Romanticism. Yet there was nothing precious or overly polished in Badura-Skoda's presentation. If anything, the remarkable concert felt almost improvisatory, as if the artist were having an unusually good time with the two pianos and music he experienced very personally. As Badura-Skoda said in the informal discussion of Mozart and his music that preceded the concert, the composer's work spans the full gamut of human experience, from the most joyous to mysterious to abjectly resigned and melancholy. And that, particulary in the hands of a past master like Badura-Skoda, is what had the audience hanging on every note, on their feet in an extended ovation and sitting back down gladly, for two encores. He opened on the fortepiano with the exquisite Fantasy in D minor, expanded its resonant range with the nimble Variations on Duport's Minuet and developed an autumnal mood with the Adagio in B minor. Then the pianist moved to the larger, more forceful potential of the Steinway grand, the instrument that took the place of the fortepiano around 1820. The contrast was bracing, as Badura-Skoda gave the Sonata in D major greater gravity and urbanity than would have been possible on the earlier instrument. His touch was just as firm and equally assured in the massive final work, the paired Fantasy and Sonata in C minor. This was Mozart played as the composer might have played his own works -- freshly, as if in the act of taking shape, and from the heart. Serious, but also vibrant and dynamic, the sonatas, variations and adagio that Badura-Skoda performed as if with a new understanding were brilliant in a very singular way. In the end, brought back to the stage by a cheering audience, the pianist played a couple of tricks -- and brought his nimble wit and sheer virtuosity to the fore. After introducing Mozart's Sonata Facile No 16 in C major, and remarking that it wasn't that "facile," or simple, Badura-Skoda began on the fortepiano. Then, breaking away in mid-passage, he gestured for patience and rushed to the Steinway to continue the piece -- this time, with a modern sound. It was sheer genius, brilliantly, deftly performed and hugely entertaining. This was the most serious of serious music, but it was also animated by wit and great joy: the real thing.