Mozart's concert arias form an area of his output that has seldom received the attention it deserves. In some cases, it is true, the comparative neglect of these pieces is due to the music's sheer difficulty: almost all of them were tailor-made to exploit the vocal abilities of specific singers,some of whom had spectacularly wide-ranging and flexible voices.Very few of the arias were actually designed as independent concert pieces: the majority were composed as insertion-numbers (or sometimes substitutions for original arias) for revivals of operas either by Mozart himself, or by other composers.This was common practice at the time, and the intention was to afford one or more members of the new cast additional opportunities to display their talent - or, in the case of substitution arias, to provide a singer with a new number more specifically suited to his or her dramatic skills.
Mozart composed the aria Voi avete un cor fedele in the autumn of 1775, for insertion into Galuppi's comic opera Le nozze di Dorina [to a libretto by Carlo Goldoni], which was being performed in Salzburg by a visiting Italian opera troupe. Mozart's aria shows him already at the age of 19 a master of musical irony. It alternates slower passages in which Dorina gently mocks the ease with which her suitor can be faithful as long as he remains her lover; and quick sections where she expresses her thoughts about what he would get up to if they were to become engaged.
Considerably later is Vado, ma dove? Oh Dei! K.583 - one of two new arias Mozart provided for the revival of the comic opera Il burbero di buon core by the Spanish composer Martin y Soler in Vienna's Burgtheater, on 9 November 1789. Martin's popularity was such that Leporello is able instantly to recognise a tune from another opera buffa of his, Una Cosa rara, when it is played by the wind-band in the supper scene of Don Giovanni. It was probably no coincidence, either, that the librettist of both Il burbeto di buon core and Una cosa rara was Lorenzo da Ponte, who is likely also to have supplied the words for Mozart's new insertion arias. They were written for the Italian soprano Luisa Villeneuve, who was to take the role of Dorabella in the premiere of Così fan tutte two months later.
The principal characters in Il burbero di buon core are Giocondo and his wife Lucilla.Giocondo's business ventures are going badly, and his creditors will no longer wait for repayment. Having initially forbidden Lucilla to meddle in his family affairs, Giocondo is now forced to explain the situation to her. In the first part of her aria Vado, ma dove? Lucilla, believing herself to blame for their predicament, wonders whether it would be better for her to leave; but in the slower second section, with its prominent parts for the clarinets Mozart was to use with such warmth in Così fan tutte, she seeks guidance from love.
The rondo Al desio di chi t’adora K.577 and the much more light-hearted Un moto di gioia mi sento K.579 were substitution arias Mozart composed for the famous soprano Adriana Ferrarese del Bene [or 'La Ferrarese', as he called her) when she took the role of Susanna in the highly successful Viennese revival of Le nozze di Figaro which opened on 29 August 1789. Al desio replaced Deh vieni non tardar from Act Four, in which Susanna taunts the eavesdropping Figaro by feigning to anticipate the pleasures of a secret assignation.The new aria was as different from the original as could be imagined: while Deh vieni is a lilting serenade with pizzicato strings accompanying the bright tones of a wind trio consisting of flute, oboe and bassoon, the much more sensuous Al desio is darkly scored for muted strings with a pair each of horns, bassoons and basset-horns (low-pitched members of the clarinet family). Following its opening bars the long slow opening section has the voice accompanied for the most part by the wind instruments alone, with the intermittent addition of no more than single-line support from the cellos and basses. As Susanna looks forward to her amorous encounter, Mozart unfurls a series of arabesques on the first bassoon and first basset-horn (the latter accompanied by his colleague playing in the contrasting bottom register of the instrument, several octaves below), and the section ends with an elaborate vocal cadenza on the word 'sperar' ('hope'), accompanied by all six wind players. Towards the end of the cadenza the violins enter with a single pizzicato line, as though Mozart had suddenly remembered the serenade context of the original aria, and Susanna were urging on the pleasures of love by plucking at the strings of some invisible guitar. At the point where she confesses she can no longer contain her desire, the erotic tension is dispelled by the sudden start of the Allegro. It is, surely, only the fame of Deh vieni that has prevented this remarkable aria from being better known. It is sting on the present DVD together with the recitative, Giunse alfin il momento, which precedes Deh vieni in the familiar version of the opera.
Much more straightforward than Al desio is the arietta Un moto di gioia, designed to be sung in place of Susanna's second-Act aria Venite, inginocchiateve, as she disguises Cherubino en travesti and instructs him on how to appear more feminine. Its simple tune is in more popular style than the aria it replaces, and its waltz-like rhythm is given an irresistibleViennese lilt in the present performance by Cecilia Bartoli and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Mozart himself was confident the new aria would be a success.”The Little Arietta for the Ferraresi", he told his wife, Constanze,"should go down well, provided she takes the trouble to perform it unaffectedly, which I very much doubt." Mozart’s reservations about the soprano's dramatic talents did not, however, prevent him from allowing her to take the part of Fiordiligi in the premiere of Così fan tutte; but in 1791 a scandal involving her and her lover Da Ponte led the Emperor to dismiss her from the Court Opera troupe. It is quite widely believed that ‘La Ferrarese’ was the sister of Louisa Villeneuve, the first Dorabella. If that is so, then the description in Così of the two principal female protagonists as being sisters from Ferrara acquires added resonance. (There had been no shortage in Da Ponte's libretto for Don Giovanni of in-jokes of this kind pertaining to members of the cast and orchestra.)
Bella mia fiamma, addio K.528 was composed for the Bohemian soprano Josepha Duschek (or Dušek). Legend has it that she locked the composer in a room until he had completed a new aria for her, and that, for his part, Mozart agreed to hand it over only on condition that she could perform it a prima vista - a task he deliberately made as difficult as possible. The anecdote was related many years after the event by Mozart's son Carl Thomas, and the music seems to confirm its basis in fact: the phrase in the aria's slower opening section significantly setting the words ’Quest'affano, questo passo è terribile per me' is sung to a long and tortuously chromatic phrase which must indeed have been difficult to sight-read. Moreover, the phrase occurs three times, and on each occasion the layout of the melodic line is subtly altered in such a way that the voice has to leap upwards, or take a plunge downwards to the lower octave, at a different point. The words themselves have a double meaning: either, in their original dramatic context. 'This anxiety, this step is cruel for me'; or, as they may have confronted Josepha Duschek, 'This lack of breath, this passage terrifies me'. Mozart clearly enjoyed himself at the singer's expense, though the phrase in question is in fact deeply serious in tone - indeed, despite the circumstances in which it arose, this is one of the greatest and most profound of all Mozart's concert arias.
Mozart and Duschek were actually old friends: Josepha and her husband, the Bohemian composer Franz Xaver Duschek (not to be confused with his more famous younger compatriot Jan Ladislav Dussek), had visited the Mozart family in Salzburg in the summer of 1777. On that occasion Mozart had composed his scena Ah, lo previdi K.272 for Josepha. Now, exactly a decade later, Mozart and his wife were house-guests of the Duscheks at their summer villa on the outskirts of Prague. Mozart had travelled to Prague in preparation for the premiere there of Don Giovanni,and he put the finishing touches to the score in the garden of the villa. The recitative and aria Bella mia fiamma - resta, oh cara was composed on 3 November 1787, less than a week after the opera's triumphant first night.
The text of the scena comes from a mythological festa teatrale by the Neapolitan composer Niccolò ]omelli called Cerere placata ('Ceres appeased'). The aria is sung by Titano, King of Iberia. (The role is a castrato one.) He has asked Ceres, Queen of Sicily, for the hand of her daughter Proserpina. When his request is rejected he abducts Proserpina and Ceres vows vengeance for his action. By conjuring up a storm which drives his ship onto the shores of Sicily, she manages to take Titano prisoner; but instead of condemning him to death, she decides to banish him forever. Bella mia fiamma is Titano’s tender farewell to Proserpina, though it is addressed at the same time to Ceres, and to his friend Alpheus.
As was his custom, Mozart sets the opening recitative for voice and strings only; and the fact that the initial bars of the aria are scored in the same way enhances the surprise of the entrance of oboe and bassoon, with an interpolated phrase, in the aria's fifth bar. Following this, the music takes a sudden plunge into the minor, for the words 'acerba morte' ('bitter death'), though the dark tinge is short-lived. Much more prolonged and languorous in effect is the yearningly chromatic passage in which Titano bids farewell ('addio per sempre'), and which culminates in Josepha Duschek’s sight-reading test. In the final section of the aria, Titano's despair finds expression in an urgent Allegro.
Mozart and Josepha Duschek performed Bella mia fiamma at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in May 1789, at a concert in which Mozart also played his piano concertos K.456 and 503. Duschek included it again at the Gewandhaus in October 1796, five years after Mozart's death, when she also sang arias from Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito. Already by 18l5 the stature of Bella mia fiamma as "Mozart's truly great scene and aria" was acknowledged in a report in the influential Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung.
The occasion on which he composed Bella mia fiamma was by no means Mozart's first visit to Prague. He and Constanze had travelled there in the early months of the same year of 1787 for the production of Le Nozze di Figaro at the National Theatre. The opera had already been popular in Vienna, despite political intrigues that had conspired to dampen its success; but in Prague, where Mozart's music always met with great acclaim, the effect it produced was nothing short of sensational. It was this production alone that saved the fortunes of the impresario Pasquale Bondini, who had been on the verge of bankruptcy.
The Mozarts had arrived in the Bohemian capital on 11 January, and that same evening they were invited to one of the weekly balls given at the house of Baron Bretfeld. Mozart told his friend the singer Gottfried von Jacquin that all the beauties of Prague gathered there:

That would have been something for you, my friend! I mean, I can see you - running do you think? - no, limping after all the beautiful girls and women. I did not dance or eat - the former, because I was too tired; the latter, out of my in-bred stupidity. But I watched with great pleasure how these people pranced around with such enjoyment to music from my 'Figaro' transformed into contredanses and German dances. For here, nothing is talked about except - Figaro; nothing is played, blown, sung and whistled except- Figaro; no opera visited except - Figaro, and forever Figaro, It’s certainly a great honour for me.

The success of Figaro was such that Bondini was able to commission a new opera from Mozart for the following season.That new work was Don Giovanni. Meanwhile, during his first stay in the Bohemian capital, Mozart had given a piano recital on 19 January, and had also directed the new symphony he composed in preparation for his visit. The effect the Prague Symphony had on the audience of the day is described by Mozart's friend and early biographer Franz Xaver Niemetschek, who, following the composer's death, was entrusted with the education of his son Carl. Writing ten years after the event, Niemetschek misremembered Mozart as having written more than one new work, but there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of the remainder of his testimony. "The symphonies [Mozart] composed for this occasion are true masterpieces of instrumental composition, full of surprising transitions, and have a quick, fiery tempo, so that they immediately raise the soul to expect something sublime. This applies particularly to the grand symphony in D major, which is still a favourite with the Prague public, although it has probably been heard a hundred times."
In the Salzburg of Mozart's youth the three-movement symphony had been almost the norm, rather than the exception.Its form, which found no place for the sectionalised minuet movement, is one that evolved out of the Italian opera overture - itself a continuous piece, but one which generally fell into a quick-slow-quick pattern, with the last section often being a more or less literal reprise of the first. Even in Mozart's output, the distinction between symphony and overture is one that is not always easily made. Mozart himself adapted several of his earlier overtures as symphonies, more often than not by providing them with a new finale; and there were occasions when he carried out the reverse process: the overture to La finta semplice, for instance, was a reworking of a pre-existing symphony, and in its revised version the overture, in its turn, circulated widely as a purely symphonic work.
Mozart's interest in this hybrid symphonic form lasted until as late as 1779, when he wrote his single-movement Symphony in G major K.318. But he continued to cultivate a symphonic form in three discrete movements intermittently throughout his career. The Prague Symphony K.504 is the last and the greatest of his works in this form. In the German-speaking world the Prague is known as the symphony ‘without a minuet'; and certainly, as a profound symphonic masterpiece in three movements it occupies a unique position in the Classical repertoire.
If the Prague Symphony was composed between Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, it is a work that shares some of the dramatic character of both operas. Its effervescent finale seems to echo the hurried duet from the second act of Figaro, as Cherubino,watched by the horrified Susanna, jumps out of the upstairs window; while its imposing slow introduction, with its early turn to the minor, anticipates the much darker world of Don Giovanni. Perhaps it is not by chance that all three works share the same basic tonality of D, major or minor.
The Prague is not the first of Mozart's mature symphonies to begin with a slow introduction - that distinction belongs to the Linz K.425 - but its opening Adagio is unique in its dark, brooding atmosphere. With the exception of the first fifteen bars, the entire introduction is set in the minor, with trumpets and drums adding weight and solemnity to the proceedings. (With his timpani forcibly restricted to only two pitches, Mozart maintains their use through an intricate series of modulations with remarkable resourcefulness.) The Allegro that follows is an object-lesson in how to create a large, imposing movement out of the slenderest of musical materials. Almost everything in the piece arises out of its concise main subiect, with the violins' throbbing, syncopated note accelerating into an important repeated-note rhythmic figure, while the lower strings unfold a smooth, sinuous idea in long notes, and the wind instruments finally contribute a toy fanfare which - together with the repeated-note figure - will later form the basis of the movement's central development section. (The little fanfare itself is strikingly reminiscent of Figaro's famous 'Non più andrai'.) Unusually for Mozart, the second stage of the exposition uses the same material, but there is also a meltingly beautiful new theme which, with sublime simplicity, takes its  point of departure from the tiny phrase on the violins by which it is approached.
The use of a seemingly insignificant idea in order to generate new material continues in the slow movement, whose opening theme is followed by an afterthought, quietly given out in octaves by the strings, which will assume considerable importance in the further course of events. This, indeed, is a piece in which every phrase seems to grow with unerring logic out of the last. As for the helter-skelter finale, it finds Mozart throwing ideas back and forth between the sections of the orchestra, in a manner which shows how much confidence he must have had in the virtuosity of the wind players he had at his disposal. The development section has the principal subiect's quietly syncopated melodic line striding through the entire orchestra, to tremendous effect - indeed, so breathlessly agitated is the music here that Mozart does not relax its forward momentum even at the start of the recapitulation. Instead, development and recapitulation are fused to a startling degree, with the main subject severely condensed, and the development's violent outbursts continuing until the arrival ofthe second subject. All in all, it is small wonder Mozart's faithful Prague  public was so electrified by the music he composed for it.