ABOUT THE MUSIC

Symphony in G minor Op. 6 No. 6

Allegro

Andante più tosto adagio

Allegro molto

Music in the eighteenth century was often a family affair. Four of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons became composers: Johann Christian was only fifteen when his father died, and his reputation has never quite escaped from beneath that mighty shadow. But in the English-speaking world, at any rate, he deserves better. Johann Christian was “The English Bach”: after an apprenticeship in Italy, he settled in London in 1762. He was appointed Music Master to Queen Charlotte, and he extended a kindly welcome to the eight-year-old Mozart when he visited London in 1764. But London fashions were (as ever) transient; and when Johann Christian died aged 46, he left his widow so short of funds that the Queen herself intervened to grant her a pension.

So, we owe him one. Mozart was never in any doubt: “Mr Bach from London has been here for the last fortnight” he wrote to his father Leopold from Paris in August 1778 - “I love him (as you know) and respect him with all my heart”. It’s easy to hear what might have fascinated Mozart in this sixth – and stormiest - of Johann Christian’s six symphonies Op. 6, published in London some time before 1769. Here, in three concentrated movements, are all the elements that represented the cutting edge of musical fashion in the third quarter of the eighteenth century: the powerful, driving crescendos and torrential tremolandi of the ultra-modern “Mannheim” style; the tender, lyrical contrasting themes (as the age of Reason yielded to an age of Sensibility), and the austere, dignified craftsmanship of the central Andante: in which Johann Christian shows himself every bit his father’s son.

Aria: Va dal furor portata, K. 21

Aria: Clarice cara mia sposa, K. 256

Aria: Voi avete un cor Fedele, K. 217

Aria: Misero! O sogno K. 431

Aria: L'amerò, sarò costante from Il Re Pastore K. 208

For an aspiring opera star in the eighteenth century, the idea that you’d sing music written for a different singer would have seemed absurd. If an aria in an opera didn’t show your voice to best advantage, a skilled composer would simply run up something better.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived among professional musicians from the day he was born, and he prided himself on his ability to compose bespoke arias for individual singers. “I love it when an aria is so perfectly tailored to a singer’s voice that it fits them like a well-cut suit” he told his father Leopold, in February 1778.

Va dal furor portata might be his very first. When the Mozarts visited London in 17645, the members of the Royal Academy, anxious to test the skills of this eight-yearold “prodigy of nature”, challenged him to compose in various styles. This could well have been one of the results (one observer noted that the boy genius shortly afterwards abandoned the harpsichord to play with a pet cat). It was all good training for the future composer of operas such as Il re pastore (staged in Salzburg in April 1775).

In L'amerò, sarò costante, the young shepherd Aminto (sung by a castrato) has discovered that he’s actually a king – but here he sings of his enduring devotion to his humble sweetheart Elisa.

The other three arias we’ll hear are all bespoke products, and two of them are “insertion arias” – written to commission for specific singers to perform in operas by entirely different composers. An Italian opera