Program Notes: Stepner & Lipsitt Play Mozart’s Fifths
Featuring Daniel Stepner (first violinist, Lydian String Quartet; concertmaster, Handel & Haydn)
April 23 and 25, 2004
Mozart: Symphony No. 5
Warlock: Capriol Suite for Strings
Haydn: Symphony No. 5
Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5 (“Turkish”)
Mozart: Symphony No. 5 in Bb, K.22
Mozart was a month or two away from his tenth birthday when he wrote this little symphony during a visit to The Hague in December, 1765. Mozart’s father Leopold was taking him and his talented sister Nannerl on a tour through Europe, causing quite a stir wherever they went. They had spent more than a year in England, mostly in London, and were on their way to Paris when they were waylaid in Canterbury by the Dutch ambassador, who begged them to make a detour to Holland. The Princess of Weilburg, sister of the Prince of Orange, having heard reports of the astonishing accomplishments of the young prodigies, was keen to see them. Leopold was persuaded, and the family gave a concert soon after their arrival at The Hague in September, 1765. This was so well received that another was planned for January, and this new symphony was written for that occasion. The Mozarts remained in Holland until April of 1766. This little three-movement symphony shows the influences Wolfgang would have picked up from the Mannheim school of composition as well as from the “London” Bach, Johann Christian (the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach), whom Wolfgang had met while in England. The two got on famously together. Perhaps the most interesting element in this work is its unexpected g-minor andante, which, in Neal Zaslaw’s words, “exhibits surprising intensity of musical gesture.” Some commentators have even seen in it a harbinger of the slow movement of the great g-minor symphony (No. 40, K.550) Mozart was to write twenty-three years later. Also, lovers of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro may recognize in the opening bars of the finale essentially the same music as that introducing Figaro’s “Signori, di fuori” in the opera’s second act.
Warlock: Capriol Suite for Strings
Peter Warlock was the pseudonym adopted by the English composer, music editor, and writer Philip Heseltine, who was born in 1894. He came to a sad end, taking his own life in 1930. He was a tireless editor of early music, making some 600 transcriptions. His original compositions include about 150 songs and other vocal pieces, but only half a dozen instrumental works. This suite was originally composed for piano duet in October 1926 and arranged for strings shortly thereafter; Warlock also made an arrangement for full orchestra, but the one for strings is the version most commonly heard nowadays. The suite, reflecting Warlock’s interest in early music, is based on dances found in a 16th-century collection called Orché;sographie by Thoinot Arbeau. The name Capriol comes from one of the two characters represented in the dialogue in Arbeau’s treatise. There are six movements, of which the last, Mattachins, is a sword dance.
Haydn: Symphony No. 5 in A
It is difficult if not impossible to date many of Haydn’s earliest works accurately. Of this symphony we can say only that it was written for Haydn’s first noble employer, the Count Morzin, and dates from sometime in the years 1757-60. This was well before Haydn — the “Father of the Symphony” — had regulated the form as being in four movements, fast – slow – minuet – fast. Here he begins with a slow movement in the Sonata da chiesa style, that is, like many Baroque chamber sonatas, with the movement scheme slow – fast – slow – fast, except that here Haydn replaces the second slow movement with a minuet.
The opening Adagio ma non troppo, after a trilled galant start, incorporates some very difficult horn writing, while the oboe parts remain undemanding. The Allegro movement that follows is rather more characteristic of Haydn, showing his gift for melody and invention. The Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon has written, “Haydn’s early style is more at home in fast movements, and, therefore, his allegros are much more successful than the adagios of this period.” The Menuetto brings the horns forward again, both in the main section and in the trio, where they have a dialogue with one of the oboes. In the concluding Presto the horns and oboes do little more than add color to the busy string melody.
Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5 in A, K.219 (“Turkish”)
Besides being a master keyboard artist from an early age, Mozart was also a more than capable violinist. He wrote four concerti for the instrument in 1775 at the age of 19. The “Turkish” Concerto, like the boyhood symphony heard earlier, was written in the month of December, so Mozart was only a month away from his twentieth birthday. At that time Mozart was concertmaster of the Salzburg court orchestra, so he may well have written these concerti for himself to play, although another possibility is Antonio Brunetti, a Salzburg court violinist who was to succeed Mozart as concertmaster. The present concerto in particular may have been intended for Brunetti, for we know that Mozart wrote an alternate slow movement for it (K.261) at Brunetti’s request.
The A-major Concerto is the last, longest, most fully-developed, and most accomplished of the set. It also contains a striking innovation with the entry of the soloist: instead of repeating the themes presented in the orchestral introduction, the violin goes off on a seven-bar adagio soliloquy over a barcarolle-like backdrop in the orchestral violins. Then when the orchestra returns with the first theme, the solo violin superimposes a quite new idea over it. The tempo indication, too, is unique in Mozart’s output: Allegro aperto (“aperto” = open, broad), which seems to apply to the free, upward flight of the new theme. The expansive second movement, is, like the replacement Mozart provided for Brunetti, an Adagio in the unusual key of E major, a key signature he was to use only once again, in a piano trio (K.542) of 1788. A quite extended orchestral statement gives us a wealth of lovely material for the soloist to take up. The title of the work, “Turkish,” is derived from the finale, one of many examples of the late eighteenth-century musical fascination with the Ottoman Empire. This trend is exemplified in Gluck’s opera The Pilgrimage to Mecca and would be taken up by Mozart again in his operas Abduction from the Seraglio and the unfinished Zaide (as well as in the rondo finale of his Piano Sonata No. 11). In the concerto, Mozart seems to emphasize the meeting of East and West by opposing the first idea, a quintessentially European minuet (actually a rondo in form, in the tempo of a minuet), with the vigorous central section, a kind of march of the Janissaries, complete with the simulation of clashing, “Turkish” percussion: Mozart directs the ‘cello and bass players to slap the strings with the wood of their bows. This A-minor episode, which really smacks more of Hungarian than of Turkish influences, is one of the rare instances in Mozart of self-borrowing, having been drawn from the ballet music he wrote for another seraglio scene, this one in his opera Lucio Silla of 1772.
