Concert & Tickets

Concert & Tickets

CL@SIX - A Little Night Music

Tue 19th Jan

18:00, St Cuthbert's Parish Church, Edinburgh

Tickets: £12, £10 (concessions)

Mozart
Eine kleine Nachtmusik

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Eine kleine Nachtmusik (1787)

Eine kleine Nachtmusik is really a symphony for strings in disguise. It stands at an intriguing junction in the history of music. ‘Nachtmusik’ could be many kinds of piece performed as part of an night’s entertainment, before or after supper. They might be small, for just a handful of players or grand, for full orchestra; they could feature anything from 3 to as many as 8 or 9 movements. In comparison, the symphony was a new-comer. Again, in Mozart’s time ‘Symphony’ could mean a number of things – it could simply be an operatic overture or it could be a stand alone piece. Why am I telling you all this? Because, within 20 years of Mozart’s death, Nachtmusik as a genre would be entirely eclipsed by the symphony which would become the most important instrumental genre of the 19th century.

© Svend Brown
Schubert
Andantino (Rosamunde)

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Franz Schubert (1796-1828)
Andantino (Rosamunde) (1823)

Schubert undertook the commission to write incidental music for Rosamunde in 1823, at a time when he was already over-stretched. As a result, sections of the score are clearly recycled from other works, including this Entr’acte whose material also appears in his string quartet, D 804. The full script does not survive, so we can throw only limited light on his dramatic intent: it was played before the final act which opens on the heroine, Rosamunde, contentedly tending her sheep.

© Svend Brown
Dvořák
Notturno

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Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
Nocturne in B major for String Orchestra, Op 40

Dvořák was not content with the original version of this piece, for string quartet; nor the next, for string quintet; nor the next for violin and piano. But he championed this final version for orchestral strings. The earliest versions were called Andante religioso, and something of a spiritual quality surrounds the music. Dvorak relishes darker colours, which gives the music a kinship with the Wagner of Parsifal - undoubtedly one of the most discussed works of the period.

© Svend Brown
Mozart
Symphony No 34

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Symphony No 34, K 338 (1780)

Allegro vivace
Andante di molto
Allegro vivace

This was the last symphony Mozart wrote in Salzburg. If that sounds a bit unremarkable, consider how much Mozart hated the place. For him it represented failure: he had been forced to return to there as a last resort after years travelling Europe and not securing a lucrative post anywhere else. 1780 was to be the year when he changed his life. In the November he travelled to Munich to create an opera, Idomeneo. Then, he did not return home but went on to Vienna. By the following May he had still not returned home and was sacked from Salzburg. By then, though, he had already tasted his first successes in Vienna. Which work gave him that success? This one. It was performed at a concert in April 1781 and Mozart wrote to his father that “… the symphony conducted by [Giuseppe] Bono went magnifique, and enjoyed a great success.” Bono seems to have used a monster orchestra in Vienna: forty violins, double winds, ten violas, ten double basses, eight ‘cellos and six bassoons.

© Svend Brown

Alexander Janiczek
violin/director

Fancy an hour of delightful, relaxing music of the very top quality to start off your evening in the best possible manner? Look no further: Alexander Janiczek directs these Viennese favourites (with the added bonus of Dvořák’s atmospheric Notturno) – and no-one understands this music better.

© Scottish Chamber Orchestra Registered Office: Scottish Chamber Orchestra, 4 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh EH7 5AB, Scotland
Company Registration Number: 75079. A charity registered in Scotland No. SC015039.

CL@SIX - A Little Night Music

Tue 19th Jan

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Concert & Tickets

CL@SIX - A Little Night Music

Tue 19th Jan

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Related audio clip

Mozart Serenade for Strings No 13 in G major, KV525 - Eine kleine Nachtmusik - Allegro - excerpt

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