MOZART/HOFFMEISTER: TWO FLUTE QUARTETS - Carol Wincenc, Muir String Quartet (LINER NOTES)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART & FRANZ ANTON HOFFMEISTER TWO FLUTE QUARTETS CAROL WINCENC, flute THE MUIR STRING QUARTET Joseph Genualdi, Bayla Keyes, violins Steven Ansell, viola Michael Reynolds, cello

FLUTE QUARTET IN G MAJOR

FLUTE QUARTET IN C MAJOR

(transposed from Mozart's Allegro & Andante, K. 533 and "Little" Rondo, K. 494)

(After Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 7 in C Major, K. 309)

I. Allegro 08:53 II. Andante 06:44 III. Rondo. Allegretto 06:20

I. Allegro con spirito 06:22 II. Andante un poco adagio 06:16 III. Rondo. Allegretto grazioso 06:11

Engineering: David Hancock Digital Engineering: Gregory K. Squires Mastering: Bill Kipper, Masterdisk Corp.

Originally released on LP as MHS 7078

If you thought that Mozart wrote only four flute quartets, you’re exactly right.

Yet here, some two centuries later, are two more -no less authentically Mozartean in musical substance, but now in flute-quartet metamorphoses of their original piano-sonata chrysalises.

Long before sound could be recorded, it was an accepted custom to transcribe favorite music in varied instrumental formats to meet the needs of the widest possible potential listening and amateur-performer publics. Sometimes the composer doubled as rearranger (e.g., Beethoven’s trio versions of his Septet); more often, others rushed in to forestall him (e.g., Wendt with wind ensemble suites of hit airs from Mozart’s operas). Hyphenated credits were as common then as that of BachStokowski became more recently.

The present Mozart-Hoffmeister rubric leads us not only to fresh illuminations of long-known piano works, but to a legendary musical character, Franz

Anton Hoffmeister (1754-1812).

Although now mostly forgotten, he was one of the most prolific composers of all time (66 symphonies and overtures; 350 flute concerti, sonatas, etc., etc.), founder of a publishing house that eventually became the noted firm of C.F. Peters, and a good friend as well as occasional publisher of Mozart and Beethoven, to whom the former turned “in distress” (November 20, 1785) to “beg you to help me out with some money, which I need very badly at the moment (The Mozart Letters, trans.

Emily Anderson, Macmillan, 1938)-a plea that won Dehim two ducats (gold coins worth maybe as much as $25 each in our own late-1960s currency). It was about this time, or a little later, that Hoffmeister, after publishing Mozart’s K. 478 Piano Quartet, reneged on his agreement to issue two more (on the grounds that this now-favorite first one was “too difficult” to win success!), but

nevertheless let Mozart keep the full advance payment for the projected set of three.

Hoffmeister’s special affection for the flute and long practice skill in writing for it, reinforced by his awareness of the existing flute- and stringplayers market.

Prompted the particular scoring chosen here. Its aptness and etectiveness are surely nowise inferior to Mozart’s own.

And no flutist or flute connoisseur ever has taken seriously Mozart’s complaint that “l am quite powerless when I am obliged to write for an instrument that l can not bear.” (lbid.) That that was written (February 14, 1778) only in exasperation over the failure to be paid in full for the flute concerti and quartets commissioned by the “Dutchman” (Willem van Dejong) is incontrover tibly proved by the inexhaustible charms of these works. Hoffmeister’s choice of source materials is apt too: one sonata written only a month or two before the

“Dutchman’s" three flute quartets; the other, an assembled sonata first published by Hoffmeister himself, one of the last-years masterpieces in which Mozart’s aim was (in Alfred Einstein’s words) the fusion of the old and the new, the galant and the 1earned”.. giving “depth to galanterie through contrapuntal craftsmanship.”

Flute Quartet in C major (Piano Sonata no. 7 in C ma jor, K. 309) The first movement, Allegro con spirito in common time, opens with the arresting six-note phrase of a breezi ly exuberant first theme. Then there’s a murmuring strings transition to an even more chipper and quirky second both of which are developed and recapitulated with all the enthusiastic bravura of a young lion striking out bold ly for the first time on his own. This sonata was written in November, 1777, immediately on his arrival at Man nheim on the momentous trip that would later take

Mozart and his mother to her Parisian “Appointment in Samarra.”

Flute Quartet in G major (a whole tone higher transposition of the Allegro and Andante, K. 533, and “Little” Rondo, K. Composed specifically for the 15-year- 494) old daughter of the Mannheim Originally these were two separate Orchestra’s conductor, the composer piano works: the Rondo, written June Christian Cannabich, this sonata’s slow 10, 1786 for a now-unknown pupil; the movement, An dante un poco adagio in paired Allegro and Andante not until E, ¾, is a tone portrait of Rosa herself- January 3, 1788, also in Vienna. It was evoked by wistfully quaint, spaced-out, probably Hoffmeister, publisher of all dotted sixteenth-note phrases and a three movements ca. 1790, who first later (mid-section), more relaxed, long- combined them to form a sonata. But line cantilena, delectable cello certainly Mozart did not object, since he passages, and flute/cello dialogues. provided for the printed edition some The finale is a Rondo: Allegretto rondo-finale revisions that made it grazioso in C, 2/4, with a catchily somewhat more stylistically compatible. tuneful main theme and sprightly, skittery, bravura contrasts, again often The opening Allegro, now in G, alla costarring the cello. Small wonder that breve, features three themes: a Mozart exulted that “Papa can’t imagine winsomely meandering first for flute the applause which this sonata won” at with canonic cello imitations; a more the Cannabich’s “where it is sung, floridly swirling second, also with strummed, fiddled or whistled at least imitations; and a third announced by three times a day! Only sotto voce of stepping out-on-its-own cello. The course.” (Ibid.) song-form (A B A) slow movement,

Andante, now in C, ¾, moves from a dreamily otherworldly, hymnlike (later more rhapsodic) first section to poetic flute/cello dialogues that return, after the first section reprise, in a poignantly haunting coda. And the Rondo's casually easygoing main tune is effectively contrasted with a variety of more vigorously emphatic, busily bustling episodes. What makes this music (sonata-trouvé though it may be) so quintessentially Mozartean is his unique blend of heartfelt melodism and imaginatively ingenious contrapuntalism -what Paul Henry Lang perceptively identified as "the uncanny and unparalleled ability with which he steps in and out of homophony to polyphony and vice versa." But our incalculable indebtedness to Mozart's genius is one of which we've long been profoundly aware. It's the discovery of what we now owe Hoffmeister that is so refreshingly novel.

R.D. Darrell

PERFORMER'S NOTES by CAROL WINCENC

My initial reaction to performing transcrip­tions of the beautifully pianistic works of Mozart was a mixture of enthusiasm and skep­ticism, but I soon became convinced of their validity in the arrangements by Hoffmeister. I was curious, however, how Hoffmeister dealt with Mozart's original scores, and so began comparing. To my surprise, Hoffmeister had rewritten some eminently playable passages in Mozart's original, probably for what he con­sidered a more technical display. I have restored some of these passages in our present version (affecting predominently the flute parts), as well as changing some doublings in the string parts.

The point of departure was not to imitate the piano (an obvious temptation when deal­ing with choices of coloring, articulation, and dynamic

variation), but rather to allow Mozart's music to be experienced in a setting for which he also wrote his ever-popular flute quartets: K. 285, K. 285a, K. 285b, and K. 298. We now have two pieces which stand in­dependently and convincingly, not merely as transcriptions, but as "new" works of Mozart for flute and strings.

Engineering: David Hancock Digital Engineering: Gregory K. Squires Mastering: Bill Kipper, Masterdisk Corp.

Originally released on LP as MHS 7078