Mozart: Essential Works for Beginners 

This Mozart fellow has a bright future.

Wonderful list. I know you wanted to keep it at 10 pieces, but I’d like to add an 11th that I could not live without: the clarinet concerto. When I worked at The Record Hunter many years ago, the one record that would always sell itself when put on the store sound system was the Szell recording of the clarinet concerto on one side and the sinfonia concertante on the other-GLORIOUS!

I always thought Mozart weren’t for me, but then I got into his late operas recently & then bingo 🎯

About 3 years ago you announced that you won't talk about Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. I am so happy that you changed your mind.

I cannot resist: the actor was David Ogden Stiers, a good friend of long-standing. The character's (CHARLES EMERSON WINCHESTER's) musical tastes were a reflection of Stiers's musical tastes. His collection of LPs and CDs was vast (when he died, an entire warehouse in Oregon housed the Oregon part of the collection; he also had an LA collection), and while he was not a musician by training, he conducted - always as fundraisers - all over the US, as well as being conductor for the Yaquina Bay Orchestra on the coast of Oregon. Although the character played the French Horn, DOS did not.

Carl Stamitz also wrote a sinfonia concertante for violin and viola. Carl Stamitz was no Mozart, and his work isn't on the same level as Mozart's (let alone essential), but it's still pretty good. As the saying goes: people who like this sort of thing will find it the sort of thing they like. You can hear both of them on an album with Isaac Stern and Pinchas Zuckerman, with Daniel Barenboim conducting the English Chamber Orchestra. Personally, I love them. After I read Barry S. Brook's articles on the subject, I collected all the Classical symphonies concertantes I could find. (MDG, for example, has a nice disc of symphonies concertantes by Franz Danzi, Ignace Pleyel, and Antonio Salieri). In addition to being enjoyable to listen to, they're a good introduction to the musical scene in Paris during the Classical period.

Dear Dave. What a task! As you know, if forced to an answer, Mozart is my favourite composer. It’s something about him never becoming boring on endless repetition (I’d like some thought from others about why this is, suspect it’s not just me) and maybe because he had such an overall attractive personality and shockingly fast mind, almost like a computer, but not like a computer. Glad your list didn’t overdo it with the minor key works (eg including the C Major Quintet and Concerto 21). Virtually all of it is major key stuff. I suppose you’re inviting us to suggest other things, although your list is great given the abundance. So maybe Symphony 41 rather than 40, because that finale is so really overwhelming and gives you a sense of how Mozart’s talent can be quite quite shocking. Maybe also, because I like it so much, the two piano sonata (I think in D major) where you can see just how remarkable he could be with simple material like scales! It’s all marvellous though.

Expect a lot of folks discovered the clarinet concerto in that great scene from "Out of Africa," where Robert Redford takes Meryl Streep up in his bi-wing for her first-ever thrilling experience of flight--all to the Adagio from the concerto. How can she not fall for him?

I am so happy you chose the 21. piano concerto. It was one of the first pieces of classical music I listened to as a toddler (after eine kleine Nachtmusik) and it remains my desert island piece (I was brought up on Barenboim but have since primarily switched to Casadesus/Szell which is just perfect) . I am always disappointed when I look at lists of his "best concerts" and it is always way down the list and I never understood why. The 20. is the usual "best" concert. For me it was never the famous 2. movement that did it for me but the fantastic melodies in the first movement.

You're a brave fellow. I couldn’t make the selection from the (as you say) the sheer volume of Mozart's output. Since I came to Mozart pretty late, I have no idea how to introduce newcomers. This seems to me an excellent list.

I may have to read Mr. Rosen’s book. Some, although certainly not all of W.A. Mozart’s work sounds like one pretty, amalgamated mass to me. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, so I’ll just continue to take what I enjoy and leave the rest.

I thoroughly approve of listing Figaro before Don Giovanni. It's hard to decide which is greater, and approaching DG with the notion that one must find it superior does no one any good. I only wish that, in describing the structure of recitative alternating with arias, you highlighted the wondrous finales! Here we have drama (or at least plot) galloping forward with non-stop music. Arias are so dull by comparison. About the Sinfonia Concertante I just want to say that the stealth entrance of the violin and viola in the first movement is one of Mozart's most inspired and affecting moments. I get chills just thinking about it.

I learn so much from you. Thank you!

Just began listening, but how can the concerto for Flute and Harp be considered sub-par and something he just "tossed off"? It is a lyrical masterpiece!

It took me a long time to really appreciate Mozart and the way I appreciate his music differs from how most people do. I really can't get into his operas, but that's not his fault. I just dislike opera buffa (I'm a baroque opera/opera seria guy so give me Rameau, Handel or Puccini). Luckily Mozart was an insanely prolific composer to balance out his short life and we have tons and tons of gorgeous music to choose from. Symphony No. 39 is my favourite of his followed by no. 41. Somehow No. 40 doesn't appeal to me as strongly as the other two. Interestingly I do appreciate early Mozart a lot. I find it ambitious and edgy. For example the five Violin Concertos are works I enjoy a lot. Give me any chamber music by him and I'll enjoy it. I don't care if he was just a kid when he wrote it! Anyway, it was the Piano Concertos that made me appreciate Mozart years ago...

This a perfect list. Wouldn't change a thing. I might sneak in the aria "Ruhe sanft" for soprano and solo violin from Zaide but just because it's so damn beautiful. How about that 12 tone row at the start of the development in the last movement of Symphony 40?

Great video, great choices 👍🏻

Hey Dave, thanks for this essential list! How about adding a curated list of recommended discs/performances for each (anyone)? Especially the Divertimento & Sinfonia concertante. BTW, I absolutely love your recommendation of the Grumiaux set of the Quintets. Thank you!

Remarkable video, Dave, and well developed as it should be in such case. I wanted to take that opportunity to exchange with you about the Requiem, which, I know, is not among your favourites. Don't you think it would be better if the recordings of the Requiem were "cleaned" by removing all the parts which are known not to be at all by Mozart (so, from Sanctus to the end). The Requiem would therefore end on Hostias, leaving only pieces which are either fully by Mozart or essentially only re-orchestrated. Would that reconcile you somewhat with that work ?

I understand you ask us not to suggest anything to add to the beginners’ essentials list, but there is no essential Mozart sacred music? I understand leaving off the Requiem since it isn’t all him, but none at all?

Antonio Salieri. Villain, genius, or just mediocre? Maybe a future video or maybe just a overflow discussion when you get to S?

I don't think librettoness is a word. It could be librettitude.

In a film which shall go nameless (no need to provoke ire should I advocate a work of fiction that baselessly puts the personal character of the composer into the gutter, or, the loony bin), an "establishment" composer wistfully observes this about the Gran Partita's slow movement: "On the page it looked...nothing. The beginning; simple, almost comic. Just a pulse, bassoons and basset horns...like a rusty squeezebox. Then suddenly; high above it, an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight. This was no composition by a performing monkey. This was a music I’d never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the very voice of God."

Perfect timing. I just finished watching Amadeus (meh) and several docs on Mozart. After listening to a "hits" CD, I'm still team Beethoven.

"People thought that the funny ending was superficial and scurrilous, but Mozart was..." I really thought you were going to finish that sentence with "but Mozart was a superficial and scurrilous kind of guy."