Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Symphony No 1 in E flat major, K16 (1864)
Allegro molto
Andante
Presto
The thought that Mozart actually composed a Symphony No 1, employing (at the age of eight) a theme which would reappear in the Jupiter symphony, requires what can only be called suspension of disbelief. Did his influential father have a hand in it? Was it written by Mozart at all? Was he, wunderkind though he was, even capable of writing it? His second and third symphonies, as we now know, were the work of other people, but all the evidence points to the authenticity of K16. True, the music itself does not tell us as much. How could it be expected to do so? Even the reiterating and quite recognisable anticipation of the Jupiter symphony, which dominates the slow movement, is just an eighteenth-century tag, consisting of the notes do-re-fa-mi in sol-fa notation. Mozart employed it more than once in the course of his career, before bringing it to its apotheosis in the finale of his last symphony. Yet the way the horns play it, or underline it, in this boyhood work seems nothing if not significant, even though, in suggesting as much, we are merely being wise after the event.
Or are we? Mozart himself was presumably thinking along ambitious lines when, in writing the piece, he asked his sister Nannerl to remind him to give the horns "something special to do." Moreover the circumstances in which he composed it, during the famous family visit to London when he met Johann Christian Bach and performed for King George III, were curiously, indeed mysteriously, Mozartian, with his father lying in bed, seemingly dying of pneumonia but in fact suffering from no more than a cold, and with the children under orders not to make the slightest noise. Instead, said Nannerl of her brother, "he composed his first symphony for all the instruments of the orchestra – but especially for trumpets and kettledrums."
Though the absence of trumpets and drums from the score may suggest that it was a different symphony she was copying for him as she sat beside him in Leopold Mozart's sickroom, the parts for these instruments (not for the only time in a work by Mozart) may simply have been lost. Certainly the fanfares of the first movement sound ceremonial enough to imply their presence, even if it would be going too far to suggest, as one authority has done, that the stuttering rhythm is an anticipation of Papageno in The Magic Flute. The slow movement in C minor, however, is surely an early manifestation of sombre Mozartian poignancy, swept aside by the breezy concluding presto.
© Conrad Wilson
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Cello Concerto in D major (1783)
Allegro moderato
Adagio
Rondo: Allegro
Concertos did not take up so much of Haydn’s time as symphonies, though how many he actually wrote remains a mystery. In the most recent update of the New Grove, many of the listed works continue to bear the inscription “lost,” while others are categorised as “doubtful” or “spurious.” When you remember that even tonight’s concerto was once deemed inauthentic, you start wondering why Haydn’s concertos are so often thought to be by somebody else.
Most of them, it must be said, are of minor significance, which is one reason why their authenticity has sometimes been questioned. Unlike Mozart and Beethoven, Haydn was not a famed soloist. As a result, he lacked the incentive to produce masterpieces for himself to play. Indeed, for a vast portion of his career, he was confined to the privacy of a rural palace on the borders of Hungary, where he worked for the music-loving Esterhazy family, serving as staff composer, symphonist, and orchestral director. When, eventually, he achieved independence in Vienna, it was not for concertos that he was in demand, but for more symphonies.
Yet the Esterhazy years were those that shaped his musical personality, giving him a fine orchestra with a principal cellist, Anton Kraft, for whom he wrote the D major Concerto. This work was cherished as Haydn’s only surviving cello concerto (except for a period when Kraft was thought to be its composer) until in 1962 the Haydn expert, Robbins Landon, discovered another. Heavily promoted at the time by Rostropovich, with cadenzas specially written by Benjamin Britten, it gave cellists the happy choice between a racy, unfamiliar work in C major, and the serene, much loved, long established D major concerto we shall hear tonight.
Weighed down, as it once was, by the veneer of a heavy nineteenth-century arrangement, it now sounds all the better for the rediscovery of the original score – though nobody should expect the music to sound as audacious as Mozart’s Linz symphony, dating from the same year. The opening movement is in Haydn’s most elegant vein. The central adagio, with a main theme of characteristic breadth, is the movement that comes closest to Haydn’s symphonic style. Humour is reserved for the finale, in which Sir Donald Tovey, Edinburgh’s celebrated musical essayist, detected the strains of “Here we go gathering nuts in May.
© Conrad Wilson
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Symphony No 6 in F, Op 68, 'Pastoral' (1807-08)
Allegro ma non troppo - The awakening of happy feelings on arriving in the country
Andante molto moto - By the brook
Allegro - The joyful gathering of country folk
Allegro - Thunderstorm
Allegretto - Shepherds' thanksgiving after the storm
Composers have been evoking nature in music as long as they have been writing it down — and probably well before that. Birds, storms, streams and sunrises are a common feature of many 18th-century works, most famously (now, at least) in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. So this piece, written in 1807-08 looked back to a grand tradition, but at the same time was one of the most original and influential works of the 19th century. It is hard to imagine the nature pictures of Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Wagner, and Strauss without it.
The debate about how important it is too know the ‘story’ behind the music will never end. Beethoven himself was conflicted. This is the only one of his symphonies that follows an explicit program. "Pastoral Symphony, or Recollections of Country Life," he wrote at the head of the score, and each movement has its own tale to tell. Yet, in the sketches for the piece he wrote, "All painting in instrumental music is lost if it is pushed too far” and “Anyone with a notion of country life can discern for himself the composer’s intentions without many titles. . . . The whole will be recognized as a matter more of feeling than of painting in sounds." But it is hard not to think he is protesting too much. He clearly enjoyed imitating birdsong in the second movement (nightingale, cuckoo and quail). And his buffoonish village band is affectionately portrayed in the third movement: who knows which band inspired this hilarious vignette, or how much they drank before they played!
Tchaikovsky used to insist that Beethoven’s Fifth has just as obvious a story as the Pastoral though it is not put into words. Certainly, there are striking similarities between the two pieces. Both were first heard in the same enormously long concert in 1808. The audience who endured the many hours in a cold theatre could have been forgiven for believing Beethoven had created an altogether new form, so dramatically do these pieces differ from any symphony that they may have heard previously. Notably, both symphonies close with a linked sequence of movements, huge expanses of sound in which Beethoven explores startling transitions and expressive effects. He also asks for an unusually large orchestra in both symphonies, including trombones, piccolo and contrabassoon – none of which were standard for the time. Yet, in both pieces he holds these extra instruments in reserve until dramatic points late in the piece. The differences between the works are equally striking. The kinetic energy that crackles through the opening bars of the Fifth does not let up until the close; the question posed in its opening bars is not truly answered until the finale, some 20 minutes later. In the Sixth, by contrast, there is hardly a straight line. Harmony is soft, its arguments deceptively discursive. Beethoven dwells on picturesque details and allows lovely moments to flower, seemingly without concern for the overall picture. At least that is the illusion Beethoven creates. More than any other symphony of his, this offers repose.
© Svend Brown
A spry and brilliant symphony by an eight-year-old; a magnificent concerto, a symphony that has become a popular favourite the world over, though in its time it was astonishingly revolutionary. The familiar names of Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart conceal a wealth of stories in this delightful programme opening the SCO’s 2011/12 St Andrews Concert Season.
The Orchestra performed Beethoven's Symphonies Nos 1-8 at the 2006 Edinburgh International Festival, under Sir Charles Mackerras. The performances were recorded by Hyperion and released as a 5-disc CD box set. The Philarmonia Orchestra perform Symphony No 9. Buy from the SCO Online Shop.

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