AP News, March 25th, 2007
The word that comes to mind when watching the white-maned, 79-year-old conductor Colin Davis is _ youthful.
One has only to close one's eyes to hear that this British musician with more than a half century of experience has reached the apex of his art _ a vibrant refinement that simply sings with life.
That's what Davis offered Saturday night at Avery Fisher Hall, where he led the New York Philharmonic in a program of Haydn's Symphony No. 85 ("La Reine"), Schubert's "Tragic" Symphony and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 19 in F, with Mitsuko Uchida as soloist.
As a student at the Royal College of Music in London, Davis was forbidden from taking conducting lessons because he couldn't play the piano. He's long made up for that glitch with the mastery he brings to the repertoire for piano and orchestra.
With him, Uchida captured Mozart's magic in long, lyrical phrases that reflected her sense of this music, as stated before the concert: "Every note counts and every note speaks as if it were a single human being. And every one has got its own feeling _ its own past, its own today, and its own future, and they're changing their minds all of them!"
Dubbed "the high priestess of Mozart," the Japanese-born Uchida has played all 27 of the Austrian composer's piano concerti.
On Saturday, her touch on the keyboard was like quicksilver, each note pure and honest with expression. Even when the piano was silent, she could barely hold back her synergy with the music, sitting and moving her head and body in rhythm with each orchestral phrase.
Davis, who had started his career as a choral conductor, drew out the orchestral instruments in soaring arches of sound that breathed like a human voice _ open-ended, as if searching for what might come next. The result was _ plenty of surprises.
While conductor and soloist were on the same page, there were some near-misses in the ensemble with orchestra, both in the Mozart and the Haydn.
When he was younger, the curls on Davis's head would shiver with energy at climactic moments. Approaching his 80th birthday (in September), he exuded a quiet, exalted elegance as he danced on the podium for the minuets of both the Haydn and Schubert.
By the end of the evening, the orchestra followed, in a sublime rendering of the Schubert symphony. The composer wrote it when he was only 19 _ an emotional prodigy treading on hair-raising psychological terrain, having just been rebuffed in love.
Davis took the music _ and the listener _ into a zen-like state of meditation in sound.
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On the Net:
New York Philharmonic: http://www.newyorkphilharmonic.org
