Blomstedt leads agile, exuberant Mozart program

Capping a second week of Symphony appearances with an all-Mozart program, Blomstedt served up an agile reminder of the kind of detailed and clear-sighted music making he does best.

[...] on Wednesday he tackled the “Jupiter” with a remarkable combination of exuberance and structural solidity that made the piece’s grandeur feel wonderfully inviting.

The architectonic clarity of the performance seemed to be a legacy of his long engagement with the broad floor plans of symphonists like Bruckner and Sibelius; the fleet-footed elegance that suffused the evening was a welcome innovation.

More than any other Mozart symphony, the “Jupiter” — with its thunderous rhetoric and big rhythmic gestures — is susceptible to grandiose, blocky readings.

The slow movement sounded both expansive and intimate, and in the finale — where Mozart goes toe-to-toe with Bach on the fugal front and emerges with his head held high — Blomstedt brought out the music’s contrapuntal workings while maintaining a much-needed degree of surface elegance.

The “Haffner” Symphony boasted a similar blend of vigor and meticulous formal plotting, but there was a tentative quality that cropped up in some of the ensemble playing.