Mozart's Symphony No. 29 in A major, K. 201 from Oklahoma Baroque Orchestra's "Mozart, Mozart, & Mozart!". Performed at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral OKC 4/13/2024.
I. Allegro moderato 1:03
II. Andante 09:13
III. Menuetto 17:26
IV. Allegro con spirito 21:25
"Borrowing a strategy from the worst essayists, I am going to begin these notes with a glaringly obvious statement: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) is one of the most famous composers of all time. Excelling in nearly all of the art music forms-including opera, song, the symphony, the concerto, the mass, etc.-his music has come to define the Viennese Classicism of the late eighteenth century in the popular imagination, if not western classical music more broadly. Most of us, when conjuring memories of his music, likely focus on his mature works such as Don Giovanni or the Jupiter Symphony, works written after his relocation to the Austrian capital in 1781. In tonight’s concert, however, we go back further to explore instrumental compositions from his hometown of Salzburg written in the 1770s when Mozart was in his lateteens and early twenties. During this time, Mozart was developing his own cosmopolitan style and attempting to navigate (or escape) employment within the complicated and often hostile court of Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. These compositional strategies and, to some extent, career struggles can all be heard in the works on tonight’s concert.
Mozart’s relationship with music was shaped from an early age by his father Leopold, a violinist and deputy Kapellmeister in Salzburg whose 1756 Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing) remains a must-read for string players. Leopold was not only responsible for the musical education of both Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl, but also for organizing the lengthy international performing tours that occupied much of Mozart’s childhood. The first such international tour (the “Grand Tour”) lasted from 1763-66, and saw the Mozart family visit many of Western Europe’s most important cities and courts. Mozart and his sister played for a number of powerful monarchs and aristocrats, including Louis XV and George III, which secured their reputations as Wunderkinds. Perhaps more significantly, the tours allowed Mozart to purchase foreign music and engage with musicians who did not typically travel to Salzburg, including Johann Gottfried Eckard and Johann Schobert in Paris and Carl Friedrich Abel and Johann Christian Bach in London. In this way, the young composer began to develop cosmopolitan sensibilities and a capacity to blend national styles that would inform the rest of his career. Subsequent tours to Italy (in 1769-71 and 1772-73) furthered this cosmopolitan trend and saw the successful completion and mounting of Mozart’s first operas in Milan.
All of the works on tonight’s program feature strings, two oboes, and two horns, a standard orchestral arrangement in the 1770s. We begin with Mozart’s Symphony no. 29 in A Major, one of his most popular early symphonies. It represents a combination of Italian melodiousness, Austro-German contrapuntal complexity, and even an intimate chamber quality reminiscent of the string quartet. Indeed, though they would not meet until after 1781, Mozart became acquainted with Joseph Haydn’s “Sun” quartets during a 1773 trip to Vienna, which inspired his own early string quartets written just one year prior to this symphony. Many of these features can be heard in the first movement alone. Unlike his earlier, more Italianate symphonies-usually in three movements and beginning with a loud musical gesture followed by a quiet, more elegant one-here, Mozart starts with a graceful first theme consisting of an octave drop and staccato eighth notes moving upward in sequence. We then get the same theme up an octave, this time at a loud dynamic and imitated in the low strings. Imitation becomes central to the movement, especially in the coda, which has been described as a “contrapuntal tour-de-force” as the opening theme appears first in the violin, then the cello, the horn, and finally the viola."
Program notes written by Dr. Nathan Dougherty
Ensemble Personnel:
Violin I
Dr. Francis Liu+
Maria Marcos
Meagan McCrary
Violin II
Chazlen Rook*
Miguel Moreno
Kaitlyn Heffernan
Viola
Dr. Ralph Morris*
Joseph Messick
Cello
Cheyenne McCoy
Nicholas Bedway
Bass
Cullen Smith
Transverse Flute
Natalie Syring*
John L. Edwards
Baroque Oboe
Dr. Scott Erickson*
Billy Traylor
Natural Horn
Dr. Kate Pritchett*
Alyson Byers
Under the Direction of Dylan Madoux
Audio recorded by Andriotis Productions and Video recorded by Galen Culver
21 окт 2024
