I share your affinity for the Cello, and the Stamitz concertos are indeed fine examples. I agree completely, not quite elite level classics, but well worth having in the collection and listening to periodically.
Indeed. I mean Violin often has the love, but Cello in my opinion is just full of heart.
RoundTheBendI miss the comfort in being sadProfile Ground Control
Era: Classical
Years: 1780 - Oboe Concerto C - Domenico Cimarosa
Forms: Concerto
Score: 85 (I think I've become a softy... like everything is getting a highish score... 🤣 )
This comp is actually all quite good. Lively oboe concertos. I came here for Cimarosa's Oboe Concerto in C, but really all were stellar. I'm sure the performance was key and possibly brought less amazing arrangements to life in a great way, but having said that I didn't really feel like any of these really lacked in proper arrangements or phrasing... all pretty above bar.
There's a certain level of intrigue on this piece:
The warmth in the first movement at about 6:40 brought in by the first real deep string bass in the history of music that I've listened to so far was a welcoming warmth. This clearly is a new path for Mozart for me and what I've listened to... the depth and strength of orchestrations really is fantastic on this recording... perhaps a maturity. It's too bad he died young... I'm very curious where this maturity would have blossomed (I mean there's much more to come...but still... and really, Mozart matured music in many ways, that's not what I'm talking about, I'm just speaking to his own genius maturing).
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Music for wind ensemble played an important role in Mozart's Austria. Known as Harmoniemusik, such ensembles were based on a nucleus of a pair of bassoons to provide the bass, and two horns. Upper parts were provided by one or more pairs of treble winds, most frequently oboes and clarinets. Dispositions of this kind not only formed the basis of military bands, but also the Hausmusik of the lesser nobility, for whom wind ensembles were not only cheaper than employing a full orchestra, but also had the advantage of being suitable for both outdoor and indoor performance. Mozart himself introduces one function of Harmoniemusik in the supper scene of Don Giovanni, where the Don is seen enjoying his supper to the accompaniment of some of the popular operatic tunes of the day played by his own wind ensemble.
During his earlier years in Salzburg, Mozart composed eight wind divertimentos, works almost certainly designed for outdoor use, and primarily intended to fall pleasingly on the ear as little more than background music. Mozart being Mozart, many movements, of course, transcend such modest pretensions. Nevertheless, the three great wind serenades Mozart composed after settling in Vienna in 1781 elevate the form to unprecedented heights. While only one, the Serenade in C Minor, K. 388, can be dated with any degree of certainty, it appears that all three were composed during the composer's first two years in Vienna. The first and most obvious difference between the Serenade in B flat and its Salzburg predecessors is the huge expansion in scale, both in terms of instrumentation and length. Instead of six (or eight) instruments, K. 361 is scored for no less than thirteen--pairs of oboes, clarinets, basset horns (lower pitched members of the clarinet family), horns in F and B flat, and bassoons, with the bottom line strengthened by a string double bass. The presence of a double bass suggests that the work was intended for indoor rather than outdoor performance; this notion is augmented by the first recorded performance, which took place at a benefit concert given on March 23, 1784 at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The concert was to benefit Mozart's friend Anton Stadler, a brilliant clarinetist and basset horn player for whom he later composed both the Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581 and Concerto in A major, K. 622. A member of the audience who heard the performance recorded the effect it made on him: "...glorious and sublime! It consisted of thirteen instruments...At each instrument sat a master--oh, what an effect it made--glorious and grand, excellent and sublime." One curious aspect of the report by this enthusiastic auditor is that he mentions the work as being in four movements, whereas K. 361 has no less than seven: Largo - Molto allegro; Menuetto; Adagio; Menuetto (Allegretto); Romance; Theme and Variations; Finale (Molto allegro). This leads to the conclusion that Stadler's "first" performance only included part of the work, a procedure frequently followed in early published editions. Whatever the somewhat mysterious background to this unique work, modern listeners will surely echo those sentiments penned over 200 years ago -- glorious, grand, excellent, and sublime are indeed just epithets.
This comp is actually all quite good. Lively oboe concertos. I came here for Cimarosa's Oboe Concerto in C, but really all were stellar. I'm sure the performance was key and possibly brought less amazing arrangements to life in a great way, but having said that I didn't really feel like any of these really lacked in proper arrangements or phrasing... all pretty above bar.
There's a certain level of intrigue on this piece:
Cool! My experience is flip-flopped from yours.
I have always enjoyed Albinoni and have collected his oboe concertos in other recordings. Cimarosa is the one who is new to me, so in looking up your disc headlined by the guy I know, I discover one I didn't.
And it is a fine discovery! The Cimarosa has a depth of mood which exceeds what I normally associate with the early classical period. Very nice! Thanks for sharing a great find.
FischmanRockMonster, JazzMeister, Bluesboy,ClassicalMasterProfile Land of Enchantment
Easily the best of his symphonies. I wrote stuff and then decided to delete it... just go listen to them, they are all worth a listen, but if you are short on time, at least the 39th, 40th, and 41st. (first movement samples of each below).
Some give Karajan a hard time, but I really feel like his performances often are the best for a novice like myself. Sure there's some more HIP recordings and sure there may have been decisions to not repeat things as much, etc. to save vinyl space, but I feel like the recording power of Deutsche Grammophone combined with one of the greatest recording orchestras and one of the greatest directors of all time... well you get a fantastic recording and performance.
Symphony No. 35 "Haffner": 1782
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By mid-1782 Mozart had been a Vienna resident for more than a year, beginning to prosper from the success of his new singspiel, The Abduction from the Seraglio. Yet Leopold Mozart refused to bless his marriage proposal to Constanze Weber, and thought nothing of disrupting his son's professional life. In the midst of preparations for the first all-Mozart concert in Joseph II's imperial capital, Papa insisted that Wolfgang compose a new work for the ennoblement of Salzburg's mayor, Sigmund Haffner. In other words, a gratis job, unrelated to Wolfgang's new career and income. The wonder is that Mozart obliged posthaste, despite being harried. Between July 20 and August 5 he wrote the new D major serenade-symphony in six movements (not to be confused, however, with an earlier Haffner Serenade, K. 250). During the same fortnight he also made a wind-band arrangement of music from The Abduction ("If I don't do this, someone else will beat me to it and take my profit"), composed the noble C minor Serenade for winds (K. 388/384a), and married Constanze without Leopold's permission.
Six months later, needing a new symphony for further concerts in the Burgtheater, Mozart remembered that Leopold had pestered him for a piece and asked for its return. Papa of course took his mean-spirited time, but finally did send it. Upon receipt Wolfgang wrote that "the music has positively amazed me, for I had forgotten every single note it!" He dropped one of the Serenade's two minuets (subsequently lost) and a concluding march, then added a pair each of flutes and clarinets in movements 1 and 4, and offered K. 385 as a new piece. He conducted the first performance in Vienna's Royal Burgtheater on March 23, 1783. To Papa he wrote that "the theater could not have been more crowded...every box was full. But what pleased me most of all was that His Majesty the Emperor was present and, goodness! -- how delighted he was and how he applauded me!"
Celebratory pomp suffuses the concisely argued, monothematic sonata-form, Allegro con spirito movement without exposition-repeat. Everything relates to the main theme with its two-octave leaps, dum-dum-da-dum-dum rhythm, skirling trills and racing scales.
A sinuous song and trio with translucent textures and operatic ornamentation for the violins makes the G major Andante the longest movement if all repeats are played. The trio silences flutes, clarinets, and trumpets, yet begins with marvelously sonorous wind chords. Low strings carry the melody until violins take over with more trills, birdcalls, and galant-period embellishments, after which the song repeats.
The Menuetto movement -- not four minutes long even with repeats -- is emphatically rhythmic, and countrified rather than courtly in the song sections. Contrastingly, the trio is played legato throughout.
The final Presto is sonata form again, even more concise than in the first movement. Although Mozart wanted it played "as fast as possible," he still meant slower than the capability of most twentieth century instruments. -Roger Dettmer, AllMusic
Symphony No. 36 "Linz": 1783
A bit more thoughtful/serene... dramatic. The first movement almost sounds like it's borrowing from Handel's Messiah Hallelujah chorus, but that's a small stretch. There's a bit of playfulness here, but also some seriousness... a want to ponder/pause.
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Mozart's marriage to Constanze Weber in Vienna on August 4, 1782, left relations with his father strained. After stalling for nearly a year, Mozart and his new wife made the journey to Salzburg in order to effect introductions in July 1783, remaining until October 27. Their journey back to Vienna was broken in Linz, where they stayed three weeks during which Mozart gave a concert in the Ballhaus. The genesis of the symphony he composed for the occasion, and which has since born the name of the city for which it was composed, is explained in a letter written by Mozart to his father on October 31. After giving details of the journey and the hospitable reception accorded to him and his wife by their hosts, the Thun family, Mozart continues: "On Tuesday, November 4th, I an giving a concert in the theatre here and, as I have not a single symphony with me, I am writing a new one at breakneck speed, which must be finished by that time." No details of the remaining program are extant, but it probably followed the format of the Mozart's concerts in Vienna -- one or two piano concertos, arias, and the solo keyboard improvisations for which he was famed. After the Mozarts returned to Vienna, the "Linz" Symphony was again performed at Mozart's concert at the Burgtheater on April 1, 1784.
The symphony is scored for strings, timpani, and pairs of oboes, bassoons, horns, and trumpets. Cast in the usual four movements, K. 425 is the first of a trio of symphonies (the others are the "Prague" Symphony No. 38 in D, K. 504, and the Symphony No. 39 in E flat, K. 543) in which the main allegro (here marked Allegro spiritoso) is prefaced by a slow Adagio introduction, to which may be added the Adagio maestoso Mozart added to a Symphony in G by Michael Haydn (P16) when he was in need of new works during the height of his Viennese concert promotion activities. (The work was long accepted within the canon of Mozart's works as his Symphony No. 37 in G, K. 444). Also unusual is the introduction of trumpets and drums in the Andante, a rare incursion in slow movements in symphonies of this period. The brilliant Presto finale is a close relative of that of the "Haffner" Symphony of the previous year, with the additional interest of contrapuntal passages to contrast with the prevailing homophonic texture. The symphony as a whole is Mozart's most successful essay in the form so far, showing little sign of the haste with which it was written. Brian Robins, AllMusic
On May 1, 1786, Mozart's new opera Le nozze di Figaro received its first performance at the Burgtheater in Vienna. Enthusiastically received by connoisseurs, the long and complex opera puzzled many of the general public and it received only eight performances. Early in December, Figaro was staged at the National Theater (today known as the Tyl Theater) in Prague, where it became such a triumphant success that Mozart was induced to visit the Bohemian capital to see the production for himself. When he and his wife Constanze arrived on January 11, 1787, he had with him a new symphony which had been completed early in December (it was entered in Mozart's thematic catalog on December 6). The symphony was included in the concert Mozart gave eight days later, resulting in the first performance of a work which would subsequently become irrevocably associated with the city in which the composer witnessed his greatest triumph in later years. A decade after the concert, the Prague schoolmaster Franz Niemetschek (who educated Mozart's son Carl after the composer's death in 1791) testified to the symphony's enduring popularity: "The symphonies he composed for this occasion are real masterpieces of instrumental composition....This applied particularly to the grand Symphony in D, which is always a favorite in Prague, although it has no doubt been heard a hundred times."
Such connections have led to the general assumption by Mozart's biographers that the "Prague" symphony was composed for his visit there, but this cannot be the case -- Mozart composed the work before he received the invitation to visit the city. Indeed, a letter of his father's (November 17, 1786) clearly shows that at the time of composition Mozart was planning a visit to England, a visit which never took place becase Leopold refused to look after the composer's two young children. It therefore seems perfectly reasonable to suggest that the work was composed with Mozart's projected London visit in mind -- what we know as the "Prague" symphony might have become Mozart's "London" symphony had his plans come to fruition. An unusual feature of the symphony is that it is in only three movements; it is the only major symphonic work from the Classical period to lack the usual minuet and trio or scherzo movement. But there is nothing small-scale about the work; it amply justifies Niemetschek's epithet "grand." The opening movement, a broad, imposing Adagio introduction followed by a hugely powerful Allegro, is one of the most impressive of all Classical symphonic movements, with dramatic qualities that foreshadow Don Giovanni and a mastery of counterpoint hitherto restricted to Mozart's chamber works. The central Andante utterly transcends the easygoing implication of such a heading; it is a movement of profound, songful depth and contrapuntal skill. The final Presto also shares some of the demonic power of Don Giovanni, the opera Mozart would shortly compose for Prague, while at the same time inhabiting a world in which, for all the bright major-mode music, tragedy never seems too far away. -Brian Robins, AllMusic
No group of Mozart's works has been the subject of more discussion than his final three symphonies, Nos. 39 in E flat, No. 40 in G minor, and the "Jupiter," No. 41, in C. They were apparently composed within the remarkably short space of about two months during the summer of 1788, and the composer's motivation for writing them has since been vigorously debated. In common with his contemporaries, Mozart composed nearly exclusively for practical purposes, yet none has been positively identified in this instance. Still, the least plausible explanation advanced is that Mozart composed his great final symphonic trilogy as a result of some personal "inner need," the attractive romanticism of the theory being compounded by the assertion that he did not live to hear these three pinnacles of the symphonic repertoire performed. Such a theory runs counter to all we know about Mozart's working practices. In particular, he would not have had the time for such indulgence during the period concerned, a summer during which his surviving correspondence is predominantly concerned with increasingly desperate begging letters to his benefactor and fellow Freemason Michael Puchberg. More practically, it has been suggested that Mozart intended to mount a series of subscription concerts for the fall or Advent season. It was thought that these concerts never took place, but recently the scholar H.C. Robbins Landon has persuasively argued that these concerts were in fact held, with the three last symphonies as the principal new works performed at them. It also appears highly likely that Mozart took the new works on the tour of Germany he undertook the following year.
In the three symphonies of 1788 (to which must be added in this regard the "Prague" Symphony of 1786) we find the culmination of Mozart's assimilation of the contrapuntal style of Bach and Handel he had first begun to study during the early 1780s. It was this synthesis of "learned" style with the clean clarity of classicism that caused so much trouble for Mozart's contemporaries, to whom his late style became increasingly "difficult." Each of the symphonies occupies a very specific world of its own. The E flat Symphony, entered by Mozart into his thematic catalog on June 26, 1786, is often characterized as being "warm and autumnal" (Robbins Landon), a description that (as so often with Mozart) tells only part of the story; it fails to bring to attention the symphony's tensile strength and a dramatic quality that does not preclude moments of pathos more readily associated with the G minor symphony. There are four movements. The opening Allegro is prefaced (as it had been in both the "Prague" and "Linz" symphonies, its immediate numerical predecessors) by a powerful slow Adagio introduction. The following Andante has a secondary theme which is much stormier (and also subjected to considerable development) than might be expected in a "slow" movement, while the succeeding Minuet has an elegant gait set off by a rustic central trio. The final Allegro is a dazzling display of good humor and contrapuntal wizardry, its complexity skillfully masked in one of those movements in which the composer conceals his art. The symphony is scored for flute, pairs of clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, timpani, and strings. -Brian Robins, AllMusic
Mozart composed his final three symphonies during the summer of 1788. His entries in the thematic catalog he maintained suggest that all were written during the space of about two months. Much critical discussion has been devoted to the reasons for their composition, for it appeared that Mozart had no specific occasion in mind for their performance. The romantic notion that he composed them without practical purpose is now widely disregarded as being out of character with Mozart's known compositional procedures, and the scholar H. C. Robbins Landon has recently advanced convincing arguments to suggest that they were in fact written for a series of concerts he gave in the fall or Advent season of 1788. Robbins Landon's argument is largely based on an undated letter written by Mozart to his principal benefactor, his fellow Freemason Michael Puchberg. In this letter he refers to his concerts which will begin "next week," concerts which scholars formerly believed never to have taken place. Evidence also supports the idea (advanced by Neal Zaslaw) that Mozart took the three symphonies on the tour he made to Germany the following year, which would further undermine the long-held notion that the composer never heard three of the greatest works in the symphonic literature performed.
One aspect of the symphonies upon which commentators reach universal agreement is their extraordinary diversity of character; each has unique qualities which together utterly explode the myth that the extreme agitation and pathos of the G minor Symphony reflected the abject circumstances in which Mozart found himself at this period. The begging letters addressed to Puchberg during these months are indeed pitiful documents that might be cited as evidence of Mozart's state of mind at the time he was composing the G minor symphony. But they will hardly do for the mellow warmth, strength and humor of E flat symphony or the elevated grandeur of the "Jupiter" Symphony. Neither should it be forgotten that the tragic qualities so often associated with the symphony today have not always been apparent to all. To Robert Schumann the symphony was a work of "Grecian lightness and grace," while for a later writer, Alfred Einstein, there are passages that "plunge to the abyss of the soul."
Such ambiguity is perhaps apt for one of the greatest works of a composer whose music so frequently defies adequate description. The symphony is cast in the usual four movements; the opening Molto allegro immediately announces something unusual by starting not with characteristic loud "call to attention," but with quietly spoken agitation. The uneasy passion of the main theme leads to conclusions that seem to protest rather than find any consolation. The movement's dominant feeling is urgency: upbeat after upbeat after upbeat occurs. Amid great instability and a questioning aura, we experience a peek into Don Giovanni's abyss. In the finale, the horns intrude with wild swatches of color. There is even an eerie twelve-note insertion after the double bar in the Allegro assai section.
There are two versions of the G minor symphony. The first is modestly scored for flute and pairs of oboes, horns, and strings, but at some point shortly after composition Mozart added parts for two clarinets, slightly altering the oboe parts to accommodate them. Such second thoughts surely also add credibility to the idea that Mozart led performances of the work -- he would hardly have bothered with such refinements if the symphony was not being used for practical purposes. -Brian Robins, AllMusic
The near-quarter century that separates Mozart's first symphony and his last -- the Symphony No. 41 in C major (1788) -- was marked by the composer's recurrent, if not ongoing, interest in the possibilities inherent in this form. Upon examination of the chronology of Mozart's works, one finds that the composition of his symphonies tends to occur in irregularly spaced groups, of as many as nine or ten examples in a row, rather than regularly or singly. What this might suggest, aside from any financially based motivation, is that he employed these various periods specifically for the working out of the problems and challenges of the symphonic form. In surveying these works, one finds that the prominent benchmarks increase almost geometrically as time progresses, so that by the production of the "Jupiter" Symphony two years before his death -- as part of a group of three composed within the space of less than three months -- the full extent of the evolution which has taken place is striking indeed.
The Symphony No. 41 aptly embodies what is now identified as a paradigm of Classical symphonic form: four movements, the first and last in a quick tempo, the second slower, the third a minuet with trio. Unencumbered by norms suggested by any model, however, Mozart's deft imagination distinguishes this work from others in a similar cast. The first movement is characterized in part by the dramatic and effective employment of unexpected pauses in the rhythmic flow through the use of rests, a trait shared with and perhaps influenced by the symphonies of Haydn. After an initial regularity, irregular and changing phrase lengths contribute as well to the dramatic impetus. The serene F major quietude of the second movement's opening is soon disrupted, posed against more restless, rhythmically insistent minor-key episodes. This calm/dark conflict continues throughout, the initial spirit eventually prevailing. The falling chromatic theme and flowing, even accompaniment of the Minuet set a graceful tone for the third movement. The companion Trio provides an earthier, more overtly dancelike mood, which is, however, interrupted by a suddenly more serious tutti outburst. The final movement is exceptional for the richness of its contrapuntal language, a somewhat unexpected -- and, some of Mozart's contemporaries would venture, unfashionable -- attribute in a symphonic work of the time. The four-note motive that begins the movement is put through its paces in a number of guises, most prominently as the beginning of a recurrent canon and fugue subject which occurs both as originally presented and in inversion. The effect is one not of academicism but of great tension and dramatic impulse which, borne bristling and in search of resolution, finds its resting place only in the final bars. - Michael Rodman, AllMusic
I sometimes wonder how much alpen horns play a role in the musical influence of such who grew up in the alps... like was the neighbors grandpa always playing it or what... Anyway, I also feel like the Classical era is so massive because not only did you start having a larger palette to play with, you had "star" artists who mastered the instrument and you could write music to push boundaries. I feel this is one reason Mozart was such a massive force... he wrote so much and for so much. Anyway, no particular piece stood out to me as the best/better, but the whole thing was a quality listen.
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Mozart completed this work in 1783 for the hornist Joseph Leutgeb; the accompaniment is scored for pairs of oboes and horns, plus strings. Leutgeb, 24 years older than Mozart and a horn player in the court orchestra at Salzburg, had known the composer since childhood. He moved to Vienna in 1777, four years before Wolfgang, to become a cheesemonger (with money from Leopold Mozart, who was normally tightfisted). Leutgeb's virtuosity, acclaimed by Parisians as well as the Viennese, was obviously still intact when Mozart wrote a concert Rondo for him (K. 371), then a quintet with strings (K. 407/386c) and the first two of four misnumbered concertos, all in E flat for the valveless hand horn. If, by 1787, aging had begun to impair his technique, Leutgeb remained a superb legato player.
K. 417, despite its published number, was the first concerto and bore this autograph: "Wolfgang Amadè Mozart takes pity on Leutgeb, ass, ox, and simpleton, at Vienna on May 27, 1783." He would write even more insultingly later on, yet plainly cared very much for this lifelong friend who survived him by a decade.
The music is a treasurehouse of melody, with an expansive opening movement in common time but no tempo marking (Allegro maestoso was a publisher's, or editor's, educated guess). Following an abbreviated first exposition, the soloist enters with a new theme; later on, the development shifts to a minor key. The succeeding Andante, in the dominant key of B flat, has basic song structure with a middle-section melody of rare beauty for the soloist. A concluding, hunt-inspired Rondo in 6/8 time set the pattern for the rest of Mozart's Leutgeb concertos: irrepressibly jolly as well as comic -- by intention, of course -- this one with an accelerated coda that leaves the hounds to catch up. - Roger Dettmer
Era: Classical
Years: 1760s-1780s (likely... I didn't look all of it up)
Form: Sonata (actually many)
Score: 86.5 (if it weren't 9 hours, I think the top 20 would've gotten something closer to a 90)
While this is a 9 hour thing... I didn't lose interest once. Not once was I bored... which is incredibly impressive both for the performers and speaks to Mozarts undying ability to write clever and mostly jovial music.
Below are a sample of some of my favorites since I'm a popist (no I'm not, but thought that'd be funny to say in the context of classical "pop" music...I think I'm hysterical and I'm usually alone on that matter).
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Mozart's famous Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor (K. 310 or K. 300d, depending on whose reckoning you go by) was composed in Paris in 1778 and published there a few years later as Op. 4/3. In this work, written at age 22 or so, Mozart at last tries his hand at a sonata in the minor mode. The Piano Sonata No. 8 is, in fact, one of just three minor mode instrumental sonatas ever composed by the man: of the 22 piano sonatas (that includes four lost early ones), just two are not in the major mode, and this is the earlier of them (the other is K. 457 in C minor); and of the 30-some sonatas for keyboard and violin, only No. 21 in E minor (K. 300c, composed, like the Piano Sonata No. 8, in 1778) represents its side of the modal spectrum. One gets the feeling, listening to the Sonata in A minor, that Mozart had been stocking up on minor mode drama for some time when he wrote it. Its stormy music is a far cry from the happy-hearted, light-footed sonata fare composed up to that point.
The first of the sonata's three movements is an Allegro maestoso, whose heavy, dotted principal theme is pounded out to a stomping chordal left-hand accompaniment -- the rhythm and the texture are heavy from the get-go, and only after some time does Mozart fall into the more familiar streamlined, Alberti bass style of piano writing. The second theme, in the expected key of C major, is by contrast all grace -- the running sixteenth notes of its melody should be played as though tickling the keys. For a middle movement, Mozart concocted a lovely Andante cantabile in F major. The Presto finale bounds forth in 2/4 meter, its tune driven by an accompaniment whose one-bar pattern begins on the offbeat. -Blair Johnston, AllMusic
One of Mozart's best-known tunes, the 'Rondo alla Turca' is actually the third and final movement from his Sonata No. 11 K331 for piano.
Mozart composed Sonata No. 11 at the age of around 27 - perhaps in 1783 in Vienna or Salzburg. The third and final movement, known popularly as the Turkish March, is in the rondo form, and was entitled 'Alla Turca' by Mozart himself.
At the time Mozart wrote Sonata No. 11, the music of Turkish Janissary bands was very much in fashion. These groups are thought to be the oldest form of military marching bands in the world. Indeed, at that time in Mozart's life, anything Ottoman was very much in vogue, and you can see the influence of the empire in his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which is set in a seraglio - a type of Ottoman harem or brothel.
https://www.classicfm.com/composers/mozart/music/turkish-march-rondo-alla-turca/
Universally known as the "Sonata facile (or semplice)," the relative ease of K. 545 has ensured that it has become the most of famous of all Mozart's piano sonatas, a work that scarcely a student of the instrument fails to learn at some point in his or her career. The entry in Mozart's own thematic catalog, dated June 26, 1788, adds that the sonata was intended "for beginners." Yet despite its fame today, the circumstances of its composition are not known, the original manuscript is lost, and the sonata was not published in Mozart's lifetime, the first edition appearing in 1805 from the press of the composer and publisher Johann André of Offenbach.
There are three short movements: an Allegro, often quoted as a paradigm of the ambiguity of Classical "simplicity," a charming central Andante, and a tiny finale in Rondo form. It is remarkable to note that this unpretentious little work must have been composed at the same time as the great last trilogy of symphonies; indeed it was added by Mozart to his catalog of works on the same day as the first of those magnificent works, the great Symphony No. 39 in E flat, K. 543, one of his grandest conceptions. -Brian Robins, AllMusic
Era: Classical
Years:
1785 - Piano Concerto 20 D Min, K.466
1791 - Piano Concerto 27 B-Flat, K.595
Form: Concerto
Score: 90
Piano Concerto 20 D Min, K.466 is quite possibly top 5 material for me from Mozart (if not my most favorite). I think I'll just leave it at that. K.595 is also a fantastic piece and performance here.
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Mozart completed this work on February 10, 1785, and played the first performance the next evening in Vienna. Scoring adds a flute and two trumpets to winds, horns, timpani, and strings.
On February 11, 1785, Leopold Mozart arrived in Vienna after a wintry, bone-rattling, coach journey from Salzburg -- his first visit to the capital in 12 years and his last. On the same night he attended an Akademie by his celebrated son, who had just turned 29 and was at the peak of his popularity in ever-fickle Vienna. Leopold wrote to daughter Nannerl that, in the Casino on the Mehlgrube, he beheld "a vast concourse of people of rank.... The concert was incomparable, the orchestra excellent." After two arias by a singer from the Italian opera, there "came a new, superb piano concerto by Wolfgang, which the copyist was still writing when we arrived, and the rondo of which your brother hadn't time to play because he had to revise copies [of the orchestral parts]." This was the trailblazing D minor Concerto that survived the neglect of so much of Mozart's music during the nineteenth century. Beethoven, both smitten and influenced, played it publicly, with his own cadenzas in the first and last movements, where Mozart had improvised. No reports have survived of the audience's acceptance, but had they been hostile or even cool, surely Leopold would have reported this to Nannerl. His son's marriage without paternal permission in 1782 to Constanze Weber still rankled; so did their newfound independence. However, Papa's immediate and unreserved acceptance of Wolfgang's departures from tradition in the new concerto -- beginning immediately with an agitated, subtly changing bass line beneath the throbbing syncopation of violins and violas -- revealed a flexibility otherwise missing in his personal character. One can almost admire the manipulative Leopold for that.
In the first movement, Allegro (D minor, common time), Mozart's themes are motivic rather than conventionally melodic; more than two centuries later it remains a miracle that the soloist never plays exactly what the orchestra sets forth in the exposition, despite a rock-solid sonata structure throughout. When the piano finally enters in measure 77, it does so as an alien in a threateningly troubled land. Nor does the soloist take complete charge until the coda of the finale where, half-an-hour later, he coaxes the music into D major.
The second movement is a Romanza (B flat major, common time). Not to underrate Mozart's incomparable genius in music before this, nothing had equaled the unity of expression achieved in 1785 and after. Beyond integrating the outer movements, he made the slow movement part and parcel of the whole. This Romanza without tempo marking (but clearly Andante) is a rondo in ABACA form that plunges dramatically into G minor before the end couplet -- a significant harmonic departure not just here but in the concerto's overall context.
Mozart returns to D minor ion the third movement (Allegro assai; alla breve). Until the coda, we hear one of Mozart's rare rondos in a minor key. More precisely, it is an extended sonata-rondo (ABACDA, plus coda), since C is a development, with the reprise in section D. The development again as before in the second movement seeks out G minor -- the darkest key in Mozart's harmonic lexicon -- before D major is finally allowed to break through, albeit a whitish and wintry sun. -Roger Dettmer, AllMusic
And wow, this is a fantastic performance (not the same as the recording, but same director/soloist (Mitsuko Uchida):
While I remain a big fan of #29 (experts often cite that one as being his first "mature" symphony), there's no doubt 35 - 41 are the genuine masterpieces.
Listening to your samples was another great reminder of how important the performance is. 40 and 41 are my favorites with 40 well in the lead. I'm most familiar with my recording, a Sony Classics series with George Szell an the Cleveland Orchestra performing #s 35, 40 and 41.
Upon listening to your samples, I was immediately turned off by Karajan's 40. His tempo sounded too fast, especially in the first theme. This is Mozart's most dire opening and those notes need time to express themselves... for me, Karajan completely lost the emotional impact of the movement.
Conversely, though, Karajan brought out all sorts of light and shade in the 41 that Szell, relatively speaking, seems to just muddle through. Had I only heard the Karajan, I'm sure I would have confidently declared #41 my favorite and #40 a distant second. Karajan also brings more life to the 35 and his reading of the Prague also destroys my bargain Naxos disc. I never really cared for the Prague, which was disappointing given how much I like Czech music (understanding that the connection may be in name only). I just figured Mozart wasn't a great match for this mood, but now having heard the Karajan, I'm completely changing that assessment.
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RoundTheBend
Fischman
