2 CD - 9031-74858-2 - (p) 1992

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)





The Bicentiannal Concert on Dec. 5, 1991





Symphony No. 39 in E flat major, KV 543
31' 10"
- Adagio - Allegro 10' 37"
CD1-1
- Andante con moto 8' 30"
CD1-2
- Menuetto: Allegretto 4' 05"
CD1-3
- Finale: Allegro 7' 58"
CD1-4
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, KV 550
35' 50"
- Molto allegro 7' 30"
CD1-5
- Andante 13' 08"
CD1-6
- Menuetto: Allegro
 4' 38"
CD1-7
- Allegro assai
 10' 34"
CD1-8
Symphony No. 41 in C major, KV 551 "Jupiter"
40' 32"
- Allegro vivace
 12' 31"
CD2-1
- Andante cantabile
 11' 11"
CD2-2
- Menuetto: Allegretto 5' 48"
CD2-3
- Allegro assai
 11' 02"
CD2-4



 
The Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Dirigent
 
Luogo e data di registrazione
Grosser Musikvereinssaal, Vienna (Austria) - 5 dicembre 1991
Registrazione live / studio
live
Producer / Engineer
Wolfgang Mohr / Helmut Mühle / Michael Brammann
Prima Edizione CD
Teldec  - 9031-74858-2 - (2 cd) - 67' 41" + 40' 52" - (p) 1992 - DDD
Prima Edizione LP
-

Notes
On 5th December 1991, the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death, Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducted a concert by the Chamber Orchestra ot Europe for the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. The programme consisted of the Master's three last symphonies, uncut, with all repeats. For, as Harnoncourt says. ‘I think it is important for once to perform them together, for a special occasion, uncut, giving them their full importance, almost as though they were a single work.” This view is something more than on interpretative concept. It is the musical expression of an approach to Mozart, which has developed through the experience of conducting him over a considerable period and which is expressed with particular clarity precisely in these three works.
Mozart’s last three symphonies, which were written in 1788 in the extraordinarily short period of six weeks, constitute the keystone of a symphonic structure consisting of 41 works. In 1764/65 the eight-year-old boy had written his first symphony in E flat, K 16, in London during his tour of Europe as a child prodigy. In the summer of 1788 he composed the three last works in this genre in Vienna: the E flat, K. 543, the G minor, K. 550 and the C major, K. 551. The years between span an unbroken preoccupation with symphonic form, with the works of the "London" Bach and Karl Friedrich Abel, at the much admired Czech Josef Mysliveček, of his colleague in Salzburg Michael Haydn and his brother Joseph. Italian opera overtures, the symphonies of the Mannheim school and the works of Handel, Johann Sebastian Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, which he studied intensively from 1782 onwards, also left lasting traces. Mozart's own ventures into the symphonic form were concentrated in almost entirely detached phases, generally separated by longer intervals.
Thus in his years in Vienna (from 1781 onwards) he only wrote six symphonies. And he did not write all of them for the city which in 1781 he had considered to be “the best in the world for my profession". The fact that he wrote the trilogy of the last symphonies without a commission or any discernible reason, and apparently without any plans for their performance, in that short period is indicative of Mozart’s internal and external situation in Vienna in 1788. The Mozart expert H. C. Robbins Landon takes the view that Mozart may well have lived to conduct the symphonies, and cites as proof the revision of K. 550, in which a clarinet part was inserted. This argument is not entirely without foundation; at any rate we know that Mozart peformed symphonies in Leipzig in 1789, in Frankfurt/Main in 1790 and in Vienna in 1791.
Events of the year 1788: In Prague, music lovers had recently received with enthusiasm his two operas The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni the so-called “Coronation Concerto", the Piano Concerto in D major, K. 537, had just been completed; in March there appeared in the “Wiener Zeitung” an advertisement for subscriptions for the String Quintets (K. 406/516b, 515 and 516). The successful first performance in Vienna of Don Giovanni took place on May 7th. On June 17th the Mozarts moved once again. Bear in mind the documentary evidence that the Symphony in E flat, K 543, was completed on June 26th of that very year! Three days later their fourth child Theresia, born on 27th December 1787, died. In these months were written the heart-rending letters to his friend and fellow Freemason Puchberger, in which Mozart repeatedly implored him “to advance him some money".
Fortunately a great deal about Mozart will always remain a mystery. This includes the tact that in these internal and external circumstances he was able to crown his symphonic achievements with the three last symphonies. Each of the three works has an unmistakable stamp, an individual character, and is intensely subjective. And yet all three symphonies, the festive E Flat, K. 543, the poignantly passionate G minor, K 550, and the radiantly triumphant C major, K. 551 (which acquired at the beginning of the 19th century the soubriquet “Jupiter” Symphony) are clearly related to one another "thematically, in the relationship at their keys and by a continuous dramaturgy at tempo” (N. Harnoncourt)
It was George Bernard Shaw who wrote on the occasion of the centenary celebrations in l89l: “Mozart's most perfect music [by which he meant these three symphonies, I. A.] is the last word ot the eighteenth century." In fact the musical development of a whole century is summed up in these three works. Joseph Haydn cast the mould for Mozart and blazed the trail with his "thematic work". The contrapuntal skills were handed down by Handel and Bach, and composers had already experimented with rhythmical refinements in the French overtures at the beginning of the 18th century. But see how Mozart handles this “Inheritance”! Form and structure are in an inimitable balance. There is, for example, the solemn Adagio introduction in the E flat Symphony, calling to mind the ceremonial entry in the serenades for wind instruments. It is followed by a lively Allegro, the complex thematic material of which indicates Mozart’s highly developed sense of form. Indeed, the strong internal tension - particularly in the outer movements - is supported by thematic invention.
The finale of the “Jupiter” Symphony is truly miraculous: not only does Mozart stress the cyclical character of the whole work by developing in the coda an extremely elaborate quadruple fugue out of an inversion at the opening motif of the first movement, together with the four-note main idea and two other themes, but with this synthesis of sonata form, fugue technique and thematic sequence, as indeed with the trilogy of these last symphonies as a whole, Mozart has devised music in which - as G. B. Shaw discovered - "nineteenth-century music is heard advancing in the distance".
Ingeborg Allihn
Translation: Gery Bramall

Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
Stampa la pagina
Stampa la pagina