Pianist is conductor, takes on dual duties

Robert Tweten has conducted and he’s played piano concertos, but he’s never done both in the same concert. Or at the same time.

That will no longer be the exception when Tweten joins the New Mexico Philharmonic in an April 7 concert at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. He will conduct W.A. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 from the keyboard.

“It’s what Mozart would have done. He would have led it from the keyboard,” said Tweten, a Santa Fe resident.

	If you go WHAT: The New Mexico Philharmonic with guest pianist and conductor Robert Tweten WHEN: 2 p.m. April 7 WHERE: National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 Fourth SW HOW MUCH: $24, $35, $46 and $68 in advance at the NHCC box office, by calling 724-4771, 323-4343, by visiting www.nmphil.org or www.nhccnm.org or at the door

He said that over the years he’s thought about the possibility of taking on dual duties, but he’s felt it would mean exerting more control than he wanted to. In other words, he’d be in charge as the conductor and the pianist.

“But now when I think about it, it’s really less controlling,” Tweten said.

He said he’s comparing it to a chamber music piece: The individual orchestra members will be taking responsibility for their music-making.

“At certain times, I cue them, but in a way they listen and act on their own a little bit more,” Tweten said.

There are nuances within a basic tempo of the concerto, which means there isn’t as much stopping and starting compared to works in the Romantic repertoire.

Though Piano Concerto No. 23 is as beautiful as Mozart’s other concertos are, “this one is a little gentler and sunnier in nature than some of the other concertos around it,” he said.

The concert also will feature another Mozart piece, the overture to his famous opera “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Tweten said he put them on the same program because they were composed in the same year – 1786.

He thinks the “Figaro” is one of Mozart’s more joyful overtures.

“It starts out with incredible energy, and the last movement of the concerto is similar in a way. There are some woodwind riffs that happen in the concerto that are very similar in the overture,” said Tweten, who heads the Santa Fe Opera’s music staff.

“The middle movement is what most people find striking about the concerto. … There’s an incredible sadness, a poignancy to the piece.

“And he writes huge leaps in the piano part of the second movement that he really doesn’t do in anything else. It’s really a unique piece,” he added.

The third work on the program is Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 (“Scottish”). Tweten finds Mendelssohn and Mozart similar in terms of being “very vocal composers.”

Mozart is known for his many operas while Mendelssohn wrote two and never went further with that.

“But his ‘Songs Without Words’ is a model for what he did in most of his music – long, beautiful melodies, and the Scottish Symphony certainly has that,” Tweten said.

He recently conducted the Sarasota Opera in nine performances of Georges Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers.” This season he has guest-conducted the Utah Symphony and Opera in Giuseppe Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and the Calgary Opera in Verdi’s “Othello.”