1 CD - 9031-74728-2 - (p) 1992

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)





Symphony No. 12 in G major, KV 100 (75b)
15' 50"
- Allegro 5' 58"
1
- [Andante]
 4' 06"
2
- Menuetto
 3' 48"
3
- Allegro 1' 58"
4
Symphony No. 19 in E flat major, KV 132
22' 19"
- Allegro
 4' 06"
5
- Andante 10' 25"
6
- Menuetto - Trio 3' 51"
7
- Allegro 3' 57"
8
- Andantino grazioso (appendix)
2' 43" 9
Symphony No. 24 in B flat major, KV 182 (173dA)
10' 45"
- Allegro spiritoso 4' 12"
10
- Andantino grazioso 3' 29"
11
- Allegro 3' 04"
12



 
Concentus Musicus Wien
Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Dirigent
 
Luogo e data di registrazione
Casino Zögernitz, Vienna (Austria) - 11-12 luglio 1991
Registrazione live / studio
studio
Producer / Engineer
Wolfgang Mohr / Helmut A. Mühle / Michael Brammann
Prima Edizione CD
Teldec "Das Alte Werk" - 9031-74728-2 - (1 cd) - 52' 07" - (p) 1992 - DDD
Prima Edizione LP
-

Notes
"A great artistic genius is not always in the same degree a great artist." Thus pontificated the Swiss rnusicologist Hans Georg Nägeli in 1826 in his Vorlesungen über Musik mit Berücksichtigung der Dilettanten, for "a badly arranged collection of ideas, however beautiful, does not produce a great, or even, properly understood, a true, and certainly not a beautiful work of art".
The example which Nägeli gave of this type of non-artist was Mozart. He was to be considered an "imperfect orchestral composer, who mingled and mixed singability with the free play of orchestral ideas in a thousand colourful ways" and thus had an effect which was "corrupting rather than educative". The result: "Even those of his works which were most full of genius and riches contain traces of an objectionable absence of style."
It is precisely this "mixed taste", as it was called in the 18th century, that admirers of Mozart revere in his music, along with the incomparable skill with which he combined the most widely differing styles of his time. We find it difficult to believe that this shocked some of his contemporaries. Nägeli's indignation (a defence of the traditional aesthetic ideal of the unity of a work of art) is particularly directed at Mozart’s late works. He would therefore hardly have approved of the determination with which Mozart, ever since childhood, had made himself familiar with all the music available to him and incorporated it as soon as possible into his own works.
The Symphonies in G (K. 110), E flat (K. 132) and B flat (K. 182) were written in the period from l77l to T773 in Salzburg, in between the three journeys to Italy with his father. They were preceded by a number of long tours of the most important musical centres in Europe, e. g. Vienna, Paris and London. This is why all three works combine the elegant and entertaining style of composition then popular in Italy with touches of other national and personal idioms.
For example, a characteristic of the first movement of many Italian symphonies was a succession of themes in contrasting, keys and their unchanged repetition in a second part, without the extended interpolation of a harmonically more complex and thematically varied linking passage (the ”development”). Mozart employs this simple structure in the Symphonies in G and B flat, although the prominence of the main theme, which in both symphonies recurs after the second theme, is very reminiscent of Haydn. In the Symphony in G the wind instruments play a more independent role in the Viennese manner, rather than as they did in Italy where they were more often used to reinforce the strings. The main theme of the E flat Symphony with its forceful, loud opening and sudden, soft continuation, demonstrates the popularity throughout Europe since the middle of the 18th century of unexpected contrasts. But the treatment of the melodies is very reminiscent of the themes used in the circle surrounding Johann Christian Bach, whom Mozart had got to know in London.
The theme of the Andantino grazioso in the B flat Symphony is another of the type associated with J. C. Bach. It is most attractively scored for muted strings, doubled by the flutes, over a pizzicato accompaniment. The slow movements of the two other symphonies contain attractive contrapuntal part-writing: the sudden dynamic changes in the Symphony in G are particularly expressive.
Contrapuntal part-writing is also to be found in the Minuets; indeed, the Minuet of the Symphony in G contains a complete canon. In Mozart’s day techniques of this kind were the tools of every composer's trade; Mozart learned the rudiments from his father as a boy of four. Later the celehrated Padre Martini, an acknowledged authority on musical theory, initiated him in Bologna, when he was elected a member of the local ”Accademia Filarmonica”. Incidentally, the inclusion of Minuets in two of the three symphonies was not an Italian but a Viennese fashion.
The concluding movements are Rondos in the Italian style, although the themes in the Symphonies in G and E flat strike a French note, being reminiscent of a dance, the Gavotte.
Surely no one today would consider Mozart’s universality a typical ”rnistake of genius", as Nägeli claimed, "by achieving effects through contrast”; rather his synthesis of all the musical styles of his time is considered one of the greatest achievements both of Mozart and of the Viennese Classical school. For this very reason we can, in spite of everything, concur with one of the strict Swiss theoretician’s judgements: that "Mozart is historically as worthy a representative as the two Bachs and Haydn.”
Marie-Agnes Dittrich
Translation: Gery Bramall

Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
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