Symphony No. 27 in G Major, K. 199 is sunny, youthful music of the 17-year-old Mozart. Completed in April of 1773, it is among a group of four symphonies Mozart wrote after returning home to Salzburg following his second trip to Italy. (His opera, Lucio Silla, was being performed in Milan). Two months later, Mozart and his father would set out for the imperial capital of Vienna. Scored for two flutes, two …
The Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 19 is music of the youthful Beethoven. Composed between 1787 and 1789, it predated the First Concerto, but was published out of sequence. Filled with charm and exuberance, it follows the model of Mozart. The acclaimed pianist, Martha Argerich is now an octogenarian, yet her performance of this music sparkles with youthful vitality. (Amazingly, she was already performing Beethoven Concerti at the age of 8, as …
With Symphony No. 104 in D Major, Franz Joseph Haydn bid a triumphant farewell to London. Composed in 1795, this was the last symphony Haydn would write, and the final installment in the set if 12 “London” symphonies the composer presented over the course of his two trips to the bustling English capital. For 29 years between 1761 and 1790, Haydn was employed as kapellmeister of Esterházy Court. Isolated in the Austrian-Hungarian …
In a memorable scene from the 1984 film, Amadeus, the fictionalized Mozart composes at a billiards table. Although Mozart’s phrases unfold with an uncanny crystalline ease, the composer’s creative process probably was not as casual and effortless as the scene suggests. Perhaps in an attempt to further the legend, Mozart’s widow, Constanze, destroyed all but ten percent of her husband’s sketches, following his death. Regardless, Mozart loved to play billiards, as well …
In 1809, Beethoven received a commission to compose incidental music for the belated Vienna premiere of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Egmont. The tragic play, set in five acts, freely interpreted the heroic exploits of the sixteenth century Count Egmont, a Dutch politician and soldier who championed the liberation of the Netherlands from the autocratic rule of imperial Spain. As a consequence of his actions, Egmont was imprisoned and beheaded in 1568. Yet, his martyrdom …
In 1811, Beethoven received a commission to compose incidental music for two Hungarian-themed plays by August von Kotzebue, King Stephen and The Ruins of Athens. The plays were written to commemorate the opening of a magnificent new theater in the Hungarian city of Pest on the banks of the Danube (now the eastern part of unified Budapest). The theater’s construction was funded by Franz I, the last Holy Roman Emperor and the …
Mozart’s two-act opera, Il re pastore (“The Shepherd King”), K. 208, written to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, tells a fanciful story in which love and faithfulness triumph over ambition. The following brief synopsis is provided by Opera Online: Alessandro, king of Macedonia (soprano), having just conquered the city of Sidon, wants it to be ruled by Aminta (soprano), the young legitimate heir who became a shepherd after he was removed from the throne …