MUSIC REVIEW : COOPER PERFORMS MOZART IN SUPERLATIVE STYLE

Is there Mozart after “Amadeus”? Hollywood’s specious fantasy on the composer’s life dislodged a familiar icon, substituting a celluloid neo-punk Tom Hulce for the priggish plaster statuette that inhabits music stores and nearly every music teachers’ studio. But in spite of the power of visual images, one superlative performance of a Mozart work can instantly re-establish the composer’s true identity.

Thursday night at Symphony Hall, pianist Imogen Cooper and the San Diego Symphony gave such a performance in Mozart’s A Major Piano Concerto, K. 488. For those who read footnotes, by the way, Cooper’s piano-playing is heard on the “Amadeus” sound track. The young British pianist celebrated all of the classical graces, including a velvet touch, even and precise down to the last 32nd-note; clear textures and immaculate phrasing as well as a just balance between equanimity and propulsive drive.

In addition, she communicated the emotional profile of each movement as if she were reading straight out of the composer’s diary, from the salon pathos of the adagio to the jocular vitality of the finale. Conductor David Atherton presided over an accompaniment that was gallant, solicitous and polished. The orchestra complemented Cooper’s keyboard insights with a halo of refined sonority.

While the piano concerto alone justified attending the orchestra’s all-Mozart program, the evening’s bounty included the redoubtable Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550, and the Second Horn Concerto, K. 417. If the G Minor Symphony lacked some of the luster and concentration of last week’s performance of the Beethoven Fifth, it did demonstrate, especially in the final movements, a bold, assertive pose that cut right to the heart of this proto-romantic symphony. Perhaps some of the life-and-death drama of the last two weeks surfaced in the work’s ominous dissonances and unpredictable modulations from dark to light.

Principal horn Jerry Folsom surprised no one with his suave solo in the horn concerto. His graceful and dependable leadership of the orchestra’s horn section, which is the envy of many a better-paid outfit, is legendary to veteran symphony patrons. Although the work is not one of Mozart’s more ponderous accomplishments, Folsom’s familiar mellow patina illumined its mellifluous lines, and when it came time for the trills and hunting-horn fanfares of the finale, he dispensed them with consummate ease.

A seldom heard but sunny Overture to “Mitridate,” K. 74a, opened the program. Its convenient 10-minute duration proved ideal to allow the usual horde of tardy attendees to be seated before the piano concerto. Atherton and the orchestra appeared to enjoy this unfamiliar, not-so-trivial pursuit from the pen of the 13-year-old prodigy. The concert will be repeated tonight at 8 p.m. in Symphony Hall.