At the final program of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Music Director Louis Langrée was presented with a bouquet of roses; he gave a rose to each musician of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. Photo: Lawrence Sumulong/Lincoln Center.
In Tuesday’s (8/15) New York Times, Oussama Zahr writes, “After 21 years, Louis Langrée’s tenure as music director of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra has ended. As a farewell, he conducted two programs across four evenings last week, and the music he made was uplifting, staggeringly beautiful and, finally, triumphant. The ensemble used to be associated with a festival of the same name, but that was quietly shuttered after the 2019 season. Next year, the players will have a new name and a new music director. But the sound of the orchestra—which draws its musicians from the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke’s and several other groups—as it is known today was built by Langrée…. Tuesday’s program … [featured] pieces by Lully, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Kodaly and Valerie Coleman … Randall Goosby … was luminous in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto … Friday’s [concert] was … a jubilant tour through Mozart’s final three symphonies…. Langrée … thanked the ushers, stage crews and security personnel and expressed pride in the Mostly Mozart players … He pushed back against the way ‘Lincoln Center wants to present less classical because it’s elitist,’ adding that the center can and should embrace hip-hop and R&B without abandoning Mostly Mozart fare…. The audience … applauded him and the players for nearly 20 minutes at the end.”
