Concert & Tickets
Osborne Plays Mozart
- Prokofiev
Programme note
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Symphony No 1 in D major, Op 25 'Classical' (1917)Allegro
Larghetto
Gavotte: Non troppo allegro
Finale: Molto vivace
Prokofiev claimed that his music possessed five principal manners: the classical, the lyric, the modern, the motoric, the grotesque. Though it is quite obvious to which category the first of his seven symphonies belongs, the classicism announced by its title is more a matter of witty pastiche than of anything more creatively ambitious. The work is not, despite Prokofiev’s declared aims for it, a symphony such as Haydn might have written, had he been still alive to do so. Haydn, by then, would have been writing very differently from (and probably more Mahlerishly than) the composer of the twelve superb London symphonies. Prokofiev’s own music in any case was of a sort that seethed with change. Having reached a state of ferocious grotesquerie in his Suggestion Diabolique of 1908, he anticipated the “ten days that shook the world” in 1917 with the airy lyricism of the First Violin Concerto in the summer of that year. In the dissonant context of his Scythian Suite, which in 1914 had been his answer to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, his Classical Symphony was just a joke, albeit an extremely good one, which today’s audiences continue to relish.If Prokofiev’s intentions in writing this were really, as he later admitted, to “tease the geese,” then he succeeded admirably. Teasing was always a Prokofiev speciality. So although the music could never be mistaken for Haydn, nor for anything other than what it was, its sense of comedy proved unmistakable and its pellucid use of a classical-sized orchestra marvellously adept. Its popularity was assured from the start, and the work soon established itself as a classic in its own right.
It begins cleverly, as Mozart or Haydn would instantly have recognised, with a fake Mannheim rocket - a call to attention pioneered by Bavaria’s brilliant eighteenth-century orchestra based in that city. The main theme, deftly unfurled, leads to a second theme involving neat grace-notes from the violins in their upper register and soft downward leaps requiring the most precise articulation. Mannheim rockets continue to explode while Prokofiev assembles (with some modern modulations) his equivalent of a classical first movement, making the most of his dapper material until the music has run its traditional course.
The machine-tooled angularity of the slow movement, with its quietly tripping rhythm, sounds very much the cool essence of Prokofiev at a time when Russia was in political tumoil. A Prokofievian gavotte is substituted, with further angularity, for the expected classical minuet, but quickly makes way for a nimble finale which fizzes along with unswerving momentum.
© Conrad Wilson
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto in B flat major, K595 (1791)Allegro
Larghetto
Allegro"Everything is cold for me – ice cold," wrote Mozart at the start of what was to be the last year of his life. He was not referring to the Viennese weather. His fame as Europe’s finest pianist-composer, who had brought the art of the piano concerto to its zenith, was dwindling. He had cash-flow problems, though these were in the process of being resolved. He was suffering from depression. But, as Meynard Solomon declared in his great Mozart biography, he "somehow managed to stem the drift into silence". He did so with a chain of masterpieces whose sheer quantity and variety - from The Magic Flute to the most subtle sequences of ballroom dances - he had not previously surpassed.
At the beginning of January he completed the last of his piano concertos, K595 in B flat major. His Clarinet Concerto, his last great string quintet, his last two operas, and a group of haunting miniatures - the Little German Cantata, the touching Ave Verum Corpus, the music for mechanical organ, the last few songs - still lay ahead, as also did the great unfinished Requiem. Though the last piano concerto has been thought to possess the quality of a 'transfigured farewell' - a very apt phrase with which to describe it - there is not the slightest evidence that Mozart himself thought about it that way, or that when he wrote it he was more than usually aware of his own impending demise. Those who say the music contains intimations of Mozart’s death are merely being wise after the event. His death-consciousness applied to the fate of all humanity.
Yet after the glitter of the ceremonial Coronation concerto, written three years previously, there is undoubtedly something very pared-down about K595, something conspicuously inward-looking about its mood. Its orchestration, with just a single flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and strings, but no clarinets and certainly no trumpets and drums, is almost minimalist by Mozart’s standards at the time. Even the movement headings - 'Allegro', 'Larghetto', 'Allegro' - are reduced to single words. All this seems significant, but whether it signifies death or what might have been the start of a new phase in Mozart’s output of concertos is another matter.
Whatever else he had in mind - and it looked like quite a lot - further piano concertos at that point looked unlikely. When he played K595 on 4 March 1791, it was destined to be his last public appearance as a solo pianist before his death nine months later. The person who made it possible was an old acquaintance - the successful clarinettist Joseph Baehr - who slotted it into a concert in which Mozart was quite clearly not the star. The programme, given in the hall of a restaurant owner round the corner from Mozart’s apartment, featured Baehr himself as the main attraction. Next in importance was the singer Aloysia Lange, Mozart’s sister-in-law, whom he had loved and once hoped to marry. The information that "Herr Kapellmeister Mozart will play a concerto on the fortepiano" came third in line.
Did the work’s murmuring, unhurried opening make its mark? Were the downward scales and chromaticisms thought to possess a forlorn wraithlike eloquence? Was the flow of the music, in which one theme merges with the next, perceived to be beautifully sustained or did the audience fail to grasp such extraordinary continuity of line? Mozart’s own cadenza, written into the score, adds to the first movement’s special unity, as does the similarly personal cadenza in the finale.
The simplicity of the slow movement, which one distinguished but sometimes imperceptive authority on Mozart’s concertos has deemed to be a sign of waning inspiration, is perfectly in keeping with the veiled beauty of the rest of the work. Even the buoyant main theme of the rondo finale, which in an earlier concerto might have sounded like a vigorous hunting motif, has a delicacy appropriate to the intimacy of the music. It is no surprise that Mozart employed almost the same melody in one of his last songs, entitled 'Longing for Spring'.
Though it might seem sentimental to point out that 1791’s was to be Mozart’s last spring, the poignancy of the music makes the temptation irresistible. Yet there is also a lightweight muscularity about this movement which makes it possible to draw quite different conclusions about its meaning. In Mozart's last piano concerto, as in so many of its great predecessors, ambiguity reigned supreme.
© Conrad Wilson
- Haydn
Programme note
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809):
Symphony No 92 in G 'Oxford'Adagio – Allegro spiritoso
Adagio
Menuetto: Allegretto
PrestoHaydn’s relations with Oxford got off on the wrong foot. He had come to England at the invitation of the impresario Johann Peter Salomon in 1791, and arrived to find himself an A-list celebrity. Had there been paparazzi in the 1790s, they would have pursued him hotly. So just imagine how exciting it must have been for the good people of the distinguished (but musically quite provincial) city of Oxford to hear that he would appear in concert there on May 18th. A huge crowd duly assembled — only to be disappointed! Haydn was a no-show. Word of their disappointment reached the great composer, who seems to have been a genuinely humble, warm and magnanimous human being, unspoiled by his stellar reputation. One week later he apologized in print, explaining that he had been unavoidably detained by opera rehearsals in London. He ended charmingly by saying, “The University of Oxford, whose great reputation I heard abroad, is too great an object for me not to see before I leave England, and I shall take the earliest opportunity of paying it a visit.” Two months later he fulfilled his pledge, and graciously accepted an honorary degree from the university. He enjoyed that experience very much, with the exception of being expected to traipse around the streets for three days in his ceremonial garb – a scarlet robe with flouncy frills at the collar and cuffs. Clearly it did not undermine his dignity too much – and he even raised a laugh at a concert by lifting the edges of his gown in a kind of curtsey to acknowledge applause. One paper reported that the gesture got a far warmer response than the soprano soloist!
One of his symphonies was performed at the event, and naturally it came to be known as the Oxford Symphony. Strictly speaking, that is a dubious title. The piece was one of three that Haydn wrote in the late 1780s in response to simultaneous requests for new works from aristocrats in Paris and a small principality in what is now Bavaria. Realizing that neither patron would be any the wiser, Haydn sent the same three symphonies to both! For this piece to wind up being called the ‘Oxford’ merely caps the geographical shenanigans. To be fair, Haydn was on the level in Oxford. He had originally planned to play one of his newest London symphonies, but the house orchestra appears not to have been up to the job. This piece was substituted, and the local critic commented that it was “very fine, but well known.”
On of Haydn’s abiding fascinations – which grew with his age – was the challenge of developing the least amount of raw material into the widest variety of melodies and motifs for a single work. Assemble all the melodies of one of the late symphonies on a single sheet, and you can tease out the family resemblance with ease. This gives the end result and underlying unity and coherence (which should work mostly on a sub-conscious level) and great sense of purpose. In this piece, one example to follow through is the shape of the first proper theme once the slow introduction has finished. It is in the violins about one minute in. It starts on a top note, steps down 4 notes, then steps up them again to the first note then down again. Very simple indeed, simple enough to spark resemblance to the second main theme in the first movement (which inverts it), the opening theme of the second movement, and also the galloping opening of the finale which stretches that simple idea out into an eight bar melody.
© Svend Brown
- conductor
- piano
The young Prokofiev called his first symphony ‘classical’ partly in the hope that it would become a ‘classic’. The rest is history – not many pieces are as immediately likeable or more regularly performed worldwide. Okko Kamu pairs it here with one of the symphonies that inspired it (Haydn was Prokofiev’s idol), and Mozart’s last, great piano concerto.
Related audio clip
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, K595 - Allegro - excerpt
Alfred Brendel joins forces with Sir Charles Mackerras and the SCO for Mozart's Piano Concerto No 27 in B flat major, K595. Buy from the SCO Online Shop.
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