Italy Maggio Musicale Festival 2025 – Mozart, Stravinski, Poulenc: Emöke Baráth (soprano), Orchestra and Chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino / Michele Mariotti (conductor). Sala Zubin Mehta, Teatro del Maggio Musicale, Florence, 8.5.2025. (ES-S)
Mozart – Symphony No.25 in G minor, K.183
Stravinsky – Jeu de cartes (ballet in ‘three deals’)
Poulenc – Gloria (for soprano, choir and orchestra)
This program at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, conducted by Michele Mariotti, brought together three works that resist easy stylistic categorization. Mozart’s Symphony No.25 – his first in a minor key and often considered his first mature symphony – leaves behind the dramatic contrasts and declaratory flourishes of the Baroque, yet never quite embraces the balance and symmetry of Classical form. Stravinsky’s Jeu de cartes plays a game of misdirection, weaving quotations and allusions into a sparkling surface whose elegance is tinged with irony. It inhabits a space between modernist invention and detached parody – less a forward leap than a sly sideways glance at tradition. Another twentieth-century work, Poulenc’s Gloria, is equally elusive: a sacred composition that oscillates between solemn prayer and theatrical charm, never fully aligning itself with reverence or irreverence. Rather than bridging distinct styles, each work asserts a kind of aesthetic independence – negotiating contradiction not as a problem to resolve but as a source of expressive ambiguity.
Mariotti opened the evening with Mozart’s Symphony No.25, a work composed in 1773 and long admired for its dramatic intensity and emotional volatility – qualities rare in Mozart’s early output. The first movement (Allegro con brio) set the tone with insistent syncopations and urgent string figures. Mariotti paced it tautly, though the brass – tasked with driving punctuation – were occasionally unsteady, softening the music’s edge. The Andante offered a more measured lyricism, shaped by gently drooping phrases and an underlying sense of restlessness – its calm exterior shadowed by harmonic tension. The Menuetto, stern and rhythmically forceful, avoided grace in favor of weight; only in the Trio, given entirely to the winds, did a hint of levity surface. In the final Allegro, Mariotti maintained a clear through-line, shaping the music’s angular contours with precision, though at times the dramatic contrasts felt slightly underplayed. Still, the performance avoided exaggeration and treated the symphony not as a youthful outburst but as a tightly wrought study in expressive economy, balancing emotional tension with structural clarity.
Stravinsky’s Jeu de cartes – a ballet in ‘three deals’, composed in 1936 for George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein’s American Ballet – was the centerpiece of the evening, and Mariotti approached its brittle wit and neo-baroque intricacies with crisp control. The orchestra navigated the work’s shifting meters and quicksilver allusions with admirable agility, though not always with the sharp edge of irony that animates its collage-like surface. The score brims with poker-faced theatricality: pastiche Viennese waltzes and Rossinian flourishes coexist with mock-heroic fanfares and tightly wound counterpoint, all stitched together in a framework that parodies more than it celebrates tradition.
If Petrushka had thrust Stravinsky’s modernism forward with raw pathos and rhythmic rupture, Jeu de cartes takes a step back – stylized, detached and emotionally self-contained. Its drama lies not in psychological turmoil but in clever manipulation: of motifs, of expectations, of masks. Mariotti’s reading emphasized coherence over caricature, giving the ballet’s episodic form a persuasive arc. The winds shone throughout, particularly in the clever exchanges of the second deal, and the brass – more secure here than in Mozart’s symphony – contributed with clean, stylized punch. If the performance left some of the sardonic undertones underplayed, it compensated with clarity and rhythmic finesse. The result was less a portrait of the Joker’s manic instability than a lucid rendering of Stravinsky’s game-playing – elegant, precise and just elusive enough.
The concert closed with Poulenc’s Gloria, too rarely performed despite its luminous invention and unmistakable voice. Sacred in text but theatrical in spirit, the work remains a singular presence in the choral repertoire – far more extroverted and mercurial than the restrained mysticism of Dialogues des Carmélites, composed just a few years earlier. Mariotti conducted with poise, allowing its shifting moods to unfold with natural flow. The chorus, prepared by Lorenzo Fratini, sang with clarity and cohesion, particularly in the brighter outer movements. Emöke Baráth – an early-music specialist making her Florentine debut – brought finesse and tonal purity to the soprano solos, though her restraint sometimes muted the emotional immediacy. Mariotti maintained balance between chorus, orchestra and soloist throughout, letting Poulenc’s distinctive language speak without embellishment.
Edward Sava-Segal