Pianist Hamelin lacks punch in Mozart concerto

We know from many happy encounters over the years what Marc-André Hamelin thinks of Charles-Valentin Alkan, Nikolai Kapustin, Nikolai Medtner, and Kaikhosru Sorabji.

But how does he do in Mozart?

Hamelin's Thursday night performance of the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major (K. 453) with the Philadelphia Orchestra didn't pack the punch and revelation of his other appearances here. The Canadian-born pianist - once a Philadelphian, now a Bostonian - is known as the conquering hero of towering technique. You might not have been on a first-name basis with the repertoire, but you could never fail to be dazzled by his magical ability to conjure art from a digital blur.

Mozart, if less complex than the pianist-composers who followed Liszt, is just as demanding, only in a different way. Hamelin in this concerto had his own ideas, but the most interesting among them were found in cadenzas, where the pianist's personality bloomed unfettered.

He took the second movement so slowly it threatened to enter a different time zone. I'm not sure he did the orchestra any favors here, but German-born guest conductor Jun Märkl handled it elegantly. Sloth, however, did allow Hamelin great delicacy - and a stunning tone - and it heightened the impact of a cadenza that grew out of Brahms, veered toward Busoni, built in intensity and then dissipated. The short drama, it turns out, was by Hamelin, a nod to the pianist's artistic kinsmen that continued with the encore: Chopin's Nocturne in D flat major (Op. 27, No. 2). A more limpid and logically felt reading of the popular nocturne might not have been possible.

But is logic what you want from Chopin - or Mozart, for that matter? Hamelin in this concerto was totally in control, correct, even authoritarian in places. Yet there was an element of humanity in short supply that left at least one listener feeling undernourished.

The evening's counterbalance was Märkl, who wears his heart on his sleeve. In Beethoven's Symphony No. 2, his visual exuberance yielded an impulsiveness that sometimes translated into sharp ensemble attacks. The conductor seems to hear Beethoven in phrases jotted down by blunt objects.

The Haydn, on the other hand, was an unalloyed joy. Both muscular and lithe, the Symphony No. 44 in E minor, "Trauersinfonie," benefitted enormously from Märkl's light touch (his right hand confidently stopped beating time in spots to allow chamber music to take hold), from the polish of the strings, and the ease with which hornist Jeffrey Lang negotiated a part of enormous glide and altitude. This orchestra has never been known as a Haydn ensemble, even in Wolfgang Sawallisch's Haydn season. But maybe now's the time.