Scott, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, RIAM, Dublin review - towards a Mozart masterpiece

One miracle of musical performance is that a work you’ve loved for years can be revealed as never before in an outstanding interpretation. That happened to me last week at the New Ross Piano Festival when 22-year-old pianist Magdalene Cho turned us upside down in Bach’s Sixth Partita. It happened again last night when Peter Whelan and his Irish Baroque Orchestra hit 1788 with one of the three symphonic masterpieces Mozart composed in a single summer, the 39th.

Problematic, on the other hand, was the first-half Mozart, third of the four concertos he composed for his beloved horn virtuoso Joseph Leutgeb. Everyone loves Anneke Scott (pictured below by Miriam Bubna-Litic with the IBO in the previous evening's concert, held in St Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny), both as regular orchestral member on the early music scene and as soloist, but wouldn't Mozart and Leutgeb have jumped for joy at the invention of the valve horn three decades later?  Hearing the Third Horn Concerto on the kind of instrument Leutgeb would have mastered is instructive – what are the strong and the weak notes? Where lie the difficulties (answer – everywhere)? But whereas the baroque trumpet is a silvery high-noon glory, the natural horn sounds more crepuscular, not exactly the right mood for this brightly serene work. And the adjustments, water removal included, the shaking-out of the tubing, between phrases, make one uneasy. The first-movement cadenza was fine, but a little comical; the orchestra's sprightliness made amends, but this has to be an occasional experiment only. 

The opening work, however, was not only lovingly phrased and dynamically varied, as we have come to expect with Whelan's vigilant shaping, but enriched the Mozart symphony in retrospect. Dutch (Flemish) violinist-composer Pieter Van Maldere visited Ireland in the early 1750s; his Sinfonia in C has the sobriquet "Dublin" in honour of that culturally open-minded city, currently enjoying another musical renaissance.

Haydn's First Symphony was some years in the future, but the form here – missing only the finale of what we'd regard as the familiar symphonic shape – nearly encapsulates a development in its genial first movement and an elegant touch of sorrow in the Andante. The concluding Tempo di Menuetto is longer than either, and Whelan (pictured right by Miriam Bubna-Litic in Kilkenny) had the soulful idea of giving the trio to a string quartet led by the charismatic Bojan Čičić (a future full-time leader of the IBO?).

Van Maldere is resourceful with strings only, but how much light that shone on Mozart's ingenuity three and a half decades later. I don't know why I'd never really registered the varied genius of the Andante con moto, often taken too slowly (Mozart's Andante movements should never really be slow). It starts, like Maldere's with strings only, in two malleable phrases which can be turned, in true "late" Mozart style, to the minor. As in many of the later piano concertos, a contrasting episode, here surprisingly turbulent, brings in the woodwind, including clarinets for the first time in a Mozart symphony, only to have them participate and elaborate what's gone before.

With a string group of 4,3.2.2,1, all Mozart's miraculous inner detail shone through, and Whelan's way of ringing the changes on most repeats was a thing of wonder in the first-movement recapitulation, more spacious after all the searching of this development. Violins may have been non-vibrato in the main theme, but portamento lent them ideal Mozartian warmth. Crowning the delight was first clarinet Katherine Spencer, adding almost outlandish ornamentations to her fast-paced solo in the trio, second clarinet Berginald Rash spirited in the chalumeau accompaniment beneath (the two pictured below by Miriam Bubna-Litic in Kilkenny with first bassoon Carlos Cristobal). To celebrate their arrival on the IBO scene, Whelan engagingly introduced and let them play (with bassoons and horns, Scott now back within the orchestra) a delightful little movement from one of the six sinfonias composed by J C Bach with an Irish connection. An encore before the main work, which is right since nothing should follow Mozart's fizzing finale. It's clear from this that Whelan and the IBO should now work towards a concert of symphonies 39, 40 and 41; I've heard it work before with a team of similar effervescence, Robin Ticciati and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (of which Whelan as a bassoonist used to be a member), and it shouldn't fail. 

• Whelan and the IBO's Bach B minor Mass is on 1 November in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
• More classical reviews on theartsdesk