Overture Magazine 2019-20 BSO_Overture_Jan Feb | Page 14

MOVIE WITH ORCHESTRA: AMADEUS
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO)
since 2007. Trained by Robert McDonald
and Leon Fleisher, Johnson’s extensive
orchestral collaborators include Pinchas
Zukerman, Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman,
Midori Gotō, Leila Josefowicz, Augustin
Hadelich, Joshua Bell and Jean-Yves
Thibaudet. Johnson has also performed as
soloist with the Baltimore and Delaware
symphony orchestras multiple times.
Johnson’s discography includes a
2001 album, The Jennings-Johnson Duo,
with flutist Christina Jennings, and a
2010 Centaur Records release of Inner
Voice with BSO violist Peter Minkler.
Her recording of Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im
Spiegel was featured in the official teaser
trailer for the 2013 Warner Brothers film
Gravity. Johnson can also be heard on
several recordings released by the BSO,
including Naxos’ Grammy-nominated
release of the Bernstein Mass. Johnson’s
first solo CD, Turning, was released in
the summer of 2014.
Devoted to chamber music from
an early age, her many recital partners
include BSO concertmaster Jonathan
Carney; clarinetist Anthony McGill;
cellists Ilya Finkelshteyn, Amit Peled
and Kenneth Slowik; and flutist Marina
Piccinini. She is a founding member of
three duos, the Jennings-Johnson Duo
with flutist Christina Jennings; Times
Two with violinist Netanel Draiblate; and
Duo Lalu, a cabaret duo with soprano
Lara Bruckmann. She performs with
VERGE Ensemble, 21 st Century Consort,
PostClassical Ensemble and the Towson
New Music Ensemble.
Johnson has taught piano at the
Peabody Institute since 2002 and has
taught on the faculty of the Sequoia
Chamber Music Workshop and the Apple
Hill Center for Chamber Music.
Formerly the Artistic Director of
Baltimore chamber music series Music
in the Great Hall, Johnson has also
worked as Pianist and General Manager
with the PostClassical Ensemble in
D.C., an innovative and ambitious
chamber orchestra that is reinventing
the presentation of classical music with
programming that is thematic and
cross-disciplinary.
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Johnson holds degrees from Rice
University’s Shepherd School of Music,
where she was a student of Brian
Connelly. Early studies were pursued
under the direction of Jeanne Kierman
Fischer in Johnson’s hometown of
Oberlin, Ohio. Johnson’s very first
piano lessons were with her father, Dale
Johnson, an amateur pianist and professor
at Oberlin College.
When not onstage, Lura can be found
on the dance floor. She is an avid social
and competitive dancer with roots
in gymnastics, ballet and ballroom,
specializing now in West Coast Swing.
Lura Johnson last appeared with the
BSO in February of 2018, performing
Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals,
Marin Alsop, conductor.
BSO Symphonic Chorale
BSO Symphonic Chorale, formerly
Concert Artists of Baltimore, are best-
known for their rousing rendition of
Handel’s Messiah with the Baltimore
Symphony Orchestra and Edward
Polochick. As Concert Artists of
Baltimore (CAB), the highly talented
and passionate group often performed
Mozartian masterworks as part of their
Maestro Series, including Mozart’s Mass
in C Minor at the Baltimore Basilica for
the 255 th anniversary of the Diocese. The
group brings its Mozartian expertise to
the much beloved film Amadeus with the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to ring in
the New Year.
Under the umbrella of Concert
Artists of Baltimore, this ensemble
also performed throughout the region
with Lyric Opera Baltimore, Moscow
Ballet, Ballet Theatre of Maryland, the
Baltimore Basilica, Temple Oheb Shalom,
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions,
McDaniel College, St. Louis Church, The
Holocaust Museum, The Visionary Arts
Museum, The Greek Orthodox Church
of St. George and Catholic Charities. In
2015 CAB produced a groundbreaking
collaboration with the Baltimore
Rock Opera Society at 2640 Space, a
partnership that continued into 2016 at
the Light City Baltimore festival.
The BSO Symphonic Chorale
last appeared with the BSO in December
2019, performing Handel’s Messiah,
Edward Polochick, conductor.
About the Concert
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born in Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756;
died in Vienna, Austria, December 5, 1791
What is the nature of genius? How does
it differ from ordinary talent? And what
happens to the psyche and soul of someone
who desperately aspires to possess the
former while being perfectly conscious
he has only been granted the latter?
These questions lie at the heart of
Peter Schaffer’s play Amadeus (1979),
which was transformed into an Academy
Award-winning movie in 1984. Schaffer
chose as his subject the quintessential
musical genius Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart
(1756 –1791). We know his middle name
better as “Amadeus”: the Latin version
of “Gottlieb,” meaning “love of God” or
“loved by God.” In the story, Mozart’s
nemesis is the Austro-Italian composer
Antonio Salieri (1750 –1825), kapellmeister
at the Viennese imperial court, who
realizes the younger man is vastly more
gifted than himself and plots to bring
about his downfall.
In the words of British actor Simon
Callow—who played the role of Mozart in
the play’s original production as well as the
operatic impresario Emanuel Schikaneder
in the film—Schaffer’s drama is “a vast
meditation on the relationship between
genius and talent.…[Salieri], who was
industrious, skillful and pious, [was] driven
to homicide by a Mozart who was foul-
mouthed, feckless, infantile and effortlessly
inspired. In Schaffer’s play, Salieri was
the one person in 18 th -century Vienna
who fully grasped the extent of Mozart’s
genius and thus was the one most savagely
wounded by it. To him, it was a cruel joke,
perpetrated by the God he worshipped,
that the vessel chosen to receive the greatest
music ever written was the least worthy of
His creatures. All Salieri’s piety and good
taste had been passed over in favor of a
repulsive little nerd.”