Classical Period

Haydn’s Symphony No. 8, “Le Soir”: Brilliant Virtuosity and Good Humor

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Haydn’s Symphony No. 8, “Le Soir,” concludes a symphonic triptych (Nos. 6-8) which was inspired by the movement of the sun throughout the day. The first two works in this programmatic series are “Le Matin” (Morning) and “Le Midi” (Afternoon). The three symphonies were first performed during a single evening in 1761 at the Esterházy Palace in Vienna, not at the aristocratic family’s official residence 30 miles outside the city. They marked the beginning …

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Haydn’s Symphony No. 7 in C Major, “Le Midi”: Bright and Inventive

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Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 7 in C Major, “Le Midi,” is the second installment in a symphonic trilogy (Nos. 6-8) which depicts three times of day: Morning, Midday, and Evening. It was with these inventive works that the 29-year-old Haydn began his nearly three-decade-long tenure as Kapellmeister at the aristocratic court of the Ezterházy family in the spring of 1761. The appointment provided Haydn with top level musicians and a splendid isolation …

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Haydn’s Symphony No. 6 in D Major, “Le Matin”: Bold Beginnings

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Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 6 in D Major begins with a majestic musical sunrise. A single, wispy line in the first violins emerges, just above silence, to signify the first hint of dawn. Soon, we are bathed sonically in the warm, radiant sunlight of a new day. It was with this symphony that, in the spring of 1761, the 29-year-old Haydn began his employment as Kapellmeister at the aristocratic court of the …

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Beethoven’s String Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 3: The Apex of a Genre

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In November of 1792, the young Ludwig van Beethoven left Bonn, the provincial city of his birth, to resettle in glittering, cosmopolitan Vienna. Two years after this momentous move, Beethoven completed the String Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 3. The piece marked the 24-year-old composer’s first foray into the genre. A successor to the Baroque trio sonata, the string trio (violin, viola, cello) was a popular form in the eighteenth century, when …

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Daniel Behle Sings Mozart: “Un’aura amorosa” from “Così fan tutte”

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In the opening scene of Mozart’s 1789 comic opera, Così fan tutte (“Women are like that”), two military officers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, boast that their fiancées, Dorabella and Fiordiligi, would never be unfaithful. Don Alfonso makes a wager that, within a day, he can prove the officers wrong. He believes that all women are ultimately fickle. Accepting the wager, Ferrando and Guglielmo pretend to go off to war, but then return in disguise and attempt to seduce the …

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Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, “Dissonance”: The Sixth Child

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The introduction which opens the first movement of Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K. 465 foreshadows the mystery and Romantic pathos of late Beethoven. At moments, it even flirts with the twentieth century atonality of Arnold Schoenberg. In the first bars, the viola and two violins enter, one at a time, over a pulsating “C” in the cello. Their chromatic lines wander across a haunting and barren landscape, shrouded …

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Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra: A Sublime Hybrid

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Listen to the instrumental music of Mozart, and you may hear the unfolding of a virtual opera without words. Transcending mere vocal virtuosity, Mozart’s greatest operas offer layers of character development and dramatic sophistication. The instrumental lines of the orchestra rise to new prominence and engage with the voices onstage to create a magically enhanced drama. The literal reality of the story meets a deeper poetic reality. Boundaries are blurred and musical …

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