Lending Mozart a Left Hand

In a time that has brought us renovations and revisions of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” among other overhauls, do we really need a recomposition of Mozart’s “Coronation” Concerto?Yes, it turns out.As played by the Knights, an excellent chamber orchestra, on Tuesday at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, the composer and pianist Timo Andres’s take on the “Coronation” ....his cadenzas were masterly — the one at the end of the third movement receded to daring delicacy and expansiveness — and the slow central movement ached with nostalgia for a softer past while embracing the angularity of the present.That dual loyalty was also in Ives’s “Three Places in New England,” which closed the Knights’ ingenious program, the first event in this year’s series of free Naumburg Orchestral Concerts.— Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times. June 25, 2014. Read More