MOZART: Symphonies 25 & 40 - Harold Farberman, Munich Chamber Orchestra LINER NOTES

STEREO OR 325

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

SYMPHONY NO. 25 in G MINOR, K. 183 SYMPHONY NO. 40 in G MINOR, K. 550

Munich Chamber Orchestra Harold FARBERMAN, conductor

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART SYMPHONY No. 25 in G MINOR, K. 183 1. Allegro con brio 2. Andante 3. Menuetto: Allegro 4. Allegro SYMPHONY No. 40 in G MINOR, K. 550 1. Molto allegro 2. Andante 3. Menuetto 4. Allegro assai Munich Chamber Orchestra Harold FARBERMAN, Conductor

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his sister Nannerl (Anna Maria), were child prodigies. Leopold Mozart, their proud father, took them on several trips throughout Europe, and once even to England, where they exhibited their unusual skills as pianists, and young Wolfgang his ability to improvise and compose music on the spot. By the time he was fourteen, and still traveling with his father (Nanner! had by this time decided to stay at home, where she continued her musical studies), Wolfgang had composed nearly a third of all his symphonies, as well as various other orchestral, choral and vocal works. It is touching, therefore, to find in the same letter to his sister (April 21, 177O), the boy of fourteen concerned on the one hand about his school-work and on the other about the performance of his newest opera:

“Please try to find the arithmetical tables. You know that you wrote them down yourself. I have lost my copy and so have quite forgotten them. So I beg you to copy them out for me with some other examples in arithmetic and send them to me here. Mansuoli is negotiating with the Milanese to sing in my opera, With that in view he sang four or five arias to me in Florence, including some which I had to compose in Milan, in order that the Milanese, who had heard none of my dramatic music, should see that I am capable of writing an opera, Manzuoli is demanding a thousand ducats. It is not known for certain whether Gabrielli will come. Some say that De Amacis will sing. We are to meet her in Naples. I should like, her and Manzuoli to take the parts. Then we should have

two good acquaintances and friends. The libretto has not yet been chosen. I recommend to Don Ferdinando and Herr von Troger a text by Metastasio. At the moment I am working at the aria: Se ardire, e speranza.”

Similarly, on August 24, 1771, Mozart wrote to his sister describing the trip from Verona to Milan as hot and dusty. He then goes on in much the same fashion as any teenage boy his age, to give her the latest “information”:

“The Princess had an attack of diarrhoea the other day. Apart from that I have no news. Do send me some…Upstairs we have a violinist, downstairs another one, in the next room a singing-master who gives lessons, and in the other room opposite curse an oboist. That is good fun when you are composing!

It gives you plenty of ideas.”

While Mozart reveals himself as half boy and half man (but completely human a fact which is too easily forgotten when we listen to his music) the comments of one or two of his contemporaries who met him about this time also tells us something about him. In 1769, the composer Hasse wrote to his friend Giovanni Maria Ortes (a secular priest) in Venice asking him to help the Mozarts in any way he could when they arrived in that city. His letter continues:

“For the rest, I hope that you will not be displeased to know a father who has the merit of having known

how to form and give so good an education to a son who, for all that he is still almost an infant, is certainly admirable in what he knows, writes and performs on the harpsichord.”

In 1771 he again wrote to Ortes:

“Young Mozard (sic) is certainly marvellous for his age, and I do love him infinitely ... I have such a high opinion of the boy’s natural good sense that I hope he will not be spoilt because of the father’s adulation, but will grow into an honest fellow.”

In 1770, Charles Burney wrote that while in Bologna he met “the celebrated little German, Mozart, who in

1766 astonished all hearers in London by his premature musical talent ...He is now engaged to compose an Opera for Milan, on occasion of the marriage of the Principessina of Modena with one of the Arch-Dukes of Austria . ..there is no musical excellence which I do not expect from his extraordinary quickness and talents, under the guidance of so able a musician and intelligent a man as his father, who, I was informed, had been ill five or six weeks at Bologna.”

In 1772 Burney quoted a letter from an anonymous correspondent: “If I may judge of the music which I

heard of his composition, in the orchestra, he is one further instance of early fruit being more extraordinary than excellent.”

Mozart was very fond of Sebastian Bach’s youngest son, Johann Christian, the “English” Bach. The lyrical

Italianate melodies of the older composer. appealed to young Mozart, and he studied and arranged Bach’s music with considerable care. In 1767 Bach’s symphonies Opus VI were published and it seems more than likely that Mozart heard some of them during his travels. Christian Bach’s G minor Symphony, Opus VI, No. 6, appears to have been something of a favorite since in addition to the published edition, manuscript copies of the parts also exist in different cities from Copenhagen to Vienna. It is quite possible that in the course of his travels Mozart heard the symphony and was impressed by the dramatic first movement.

Mozart’s “Little” G minor Symphony was completed October 5, 1773. There are several similarities between the first movement of this symphony and the first movement of Bach’s Opus VI, No. 6. While these similarities are generally in the nature of brief melodic or rhythmic motifs, Bach’s influence can also be noticed in the lyrical second theme. This particular feature can be attributed more to Bach’s music in general (and through it to the Italian opera and opera overture) than to his G minor Symphony.

There are also foreshadowings of the “big” G minor Symphony K. 550 in this movement, in that while the later work contains a brief pause between exposition and development, K. 183 does not, but it does outline the harmonic progressions which are implied at this point in the later symphony. The first few notes of the first movement of K. 550 also serve as a transition to the restatement of K. 183 in much the same way they are used in the later work. The

primary difference is that in the early symphony this transition is abrupt and the driving motion which characterizes the movement virtually comes to a standstill in the two measures preceding the recapitulation, whereas the harmony changes more quickly and the return is effected more gracefully in the later symphony.

There is a quiet brooding quality about the second movement, which seems to flow directly from the quiet ending of the first. The muted violins in this movement give it a kind of wistful sweetness, a mood which one senses is related to the first without being certain exactly why. The menuetto is followed by a trio for the wind instruments alone. The last movement, in sonata-form. recalls the first in its intensity. There is a thematic unity in this movement, however, which is unique in Mozart’s early works.

The first and second themes are derived from a common melodic and rhythmic motif.

Mozart’s penultimate symphony, No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, is the second of three written within 2 months in 1788. In its original version the symphony was scored for flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns and strings. Mozart made changes in the wind parts for a later performance, at which time he added clarinets and rewrote the oboe parts. Nowadays the symphony is performed in both versions. The early and late G minor symphonies invite comparison to some extent partly because they are in the same key and are by the same composer fifteen years apart, and also because of certain foreshadowings in the

earlier symphony which are realized in the later work.

While K. 183 is full of youthful passion and intensity, the later work contains a kind of inner brooding quality, as of some personal, inexpressible tragedy.

On a more technical basis, Mozart’s use of counterpoint in the development section of K, 183 offers an interesting and varied texture to the homophony which preceded it in the exposition, but it is not related to either of the principal themes. In K. 550, a substantial portion of the development also makes use of counterpoint, only here it is doublecounterpoint -- wherein the original melody and a counter-melody are played against each other and then inverted, with the bass melody played by the violins and the violin melody played by the basses.

The use of the first three notes of the first theme of K. 550 as the basis for the transition from the development to the recapitulation was anticipated in K. 183, but here again, these notes were originally nonthematic, whereas now they are very closely related to it. The transition which in K. 183 is only seven or eight measures, has now become thirty measures long and leads almost imperceptibly to the return, whereas in the earlier symphony everything literally comes to a halt as the oboes and horns play a sustained chord of two measures.

In the second movement there are no longer direct resemblances between the two symphonies. The present movement is by a man who has lived to find himself perhaps Vienna’s greatest composer, certainly its finest pianist and at the same time one of its least appreciated musicians and artists. There is

poetry in this movement, but there is suffering, too.

In the revised version of the menuetto, Mozart omitted the clarinets in the trio, though he left all the other parts as in the original. If the first movement tells of some inexpressible tragedy, the last is the most outspoken and dramatic. The development section, especially, takes us into the regions of dark colors and sonorities, of grays, dark greens and blacks. Even the second theme, like a glimmer of light, ultimately becomes lost in the sombre colors which precede and follow it.

In 1789, Burney wrote:

“Mozart, who astounded all Europe by his premature talents during infancy, is now no less the wonder of the musical world for his fertility and knowledge, as a composer.”

In the light of the comment he made in the 1770's (quoted above), it would be interesting to know if this was his own opinion or that of another anonymous Viennese correspondent.

DOUGLAS TOWNSEND

i t r a e g H e M 3 2 u 0 s i 2 c R © o & y a 2 l t 7 i e 9 1 s . ℗