The Munich Chamber Orchestra (MKO) offered an entertaining program with a variety of music from the 20th and 21st centuries by Igor Stravinsky, Mithatcan Öcal, Valentin Silvestrov and John Adams under the agile, light-footed direction of Jonathan Stockhammer in the Prinzregententheater. As a soloist, the fabulous Leila Josefowicz not only shone, but also kindled the whole hall with her sparkling performance of John Adams’ Violin Concerto, which almost trembled with playfulness and wit.
This is a real killer, provided you get into the rhythmic, melodic and motoric stuff like the MKO here and the irrepressible Josefowicz. When she peppered the final movement “Toccare” with its perpetuum mobile-like percussive spiccato cascades into the hall according to all the rules of unleashed violin virtuosity, the audience roared enthusiastically and the orchestra musicians clapped happily. Josefowicz, who once studied with Jascha Brodsky at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, who also taught Hilary Hahn, was not content, unlike other world-renowned violinists, with constantly repeating the standard repertoire. Rather, she loves the music of her time because she particularly appreciates working with living composers. To the thunderous applause, let’s not forget, mad Leila, dressed in the Ukrainian colors and still aroused by Adams, thanked her with the Largo from Bach’s C major Violin Solo Sonata.
Stockhammer had previously offered Stravinsky’s witty “Danses Concertantes” with the MKO, eloquently and with a flexible sound. Mithatcan Öcal’s “Amat” from 2020 then turned out to be a bottomless formation of wind, sea and waves, which in the swaying, gliding, sinking, rising up and down and back and forth is neither harmonious nor rhythmic, neither dynamic nor in the articulation find until the trumpets sound. A tender evening serenade by Valentin Silvestrov paid tribute to Ukraine before Leila Josefowicz took over all emotion with John Adams.