Program Notes: Lin & Zazofsky Play Mozart
Featuring Muir Quartet violinists Lucia Lin & Peter Zazofsky
Friday, March 28, 2008 at 8 pm & Sunday, March 30, 2008 at 3 pm
Program Notes by Doug Briscoe
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Divertimento in C major (world premiere of Robert Stallman’s transcription of Mozart’s B-flat piano duet, K. 358)
In the Boston Classical Orchestra’s 2003-2004 season, we had the pleasure of hearing one of Mozart’s duo sonatas arranged for orchestra by Robert Stallman. Now we have another. In the case of K. 448, Mozart’s only sonata for two pianos, Mr. Stallman turned the keyboard work into a concerto with two solo parts for flutes; here, for one of Mozart’s half-dozen sonatas for a single piano with two players, Mr. Stallman has opted for an orchestra of oboes and horns with strings—a typical Mozart orchestra of the day—and no soloists.
The catalogue of Mozart’s works prepared by Dr. Ludwig Köchel in the 19th century was remarkably accurate and has long been established as a standard reference; but modern research has shown that Dr. Köchel occasionally misjudged a composition’s date. So it is with K. 358, whose “Köchel number” was revised to 186c for the third edition and more recently to 176b. We now know that the sonata was composed in the spring of 1774, when Mozart was eighteen, rather than some time around 1781, where K. 358 would have put it. Köchel’s error was understandable, since the sonata was published in 1781, and because the music shows a marked advance over Mozart’s two previous duet sonatas. This was noted by Wyzéwa and Saint-Foix in their exhaustive biography of Mozart and analysis of his works. They argue forcefully in favor of this sonata’s importance, although they denigrate the finale in strong terms, calling it not only “inferior to the other two movements” but also decrying its “distressing vulgarity” and describing its accompanying figures as “inexcusably banal”. Despite this crotchety dismissal of the finale, Wyzéwa and Saint-Foix are emphatic in their insistence that this work proclaims a new Mozart (“Voici donc de nouveau Mozart”), indicating that for the first time there is a genuine purpose to the use of all four hands at the keyboard. In 1774, four-hand music was still something of a novelty; earlier examples, including Mozart’s own, gave the melody to one hand while the other three merely provided the accompaniment, a function that could just as easily be served with one. In this B-flat sonata Mozart creates multiple distinct strands, thereby enriching the textures and increasing the contrapuntal interest. It is no wonder, then, that Robert Stallman was moved to realize the orchestral possibilities inherent in the sonata.
There are three movements. The first is a lively Allegro. The second, an Adagio, offers as its main thematic germ an idea that Mozart had used at least twice before, in both cases for fast opening Allegro movements, however: first in the Divertimento in D for strings, K. 136, and then in the String Quartet in E-flat, K. 160. The finale is marked Molto presto. Surely Wyzéwa and Saint-Foix were too harsh and can be gainsaid in their claim that the coda succeeded only in prolonging an already interminable refrain, as the movement hardly lasts long enough to wear out anyone’s patience, and even they admit that the piece has a rapid and sparkling allure.
Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809): Symphony No. 40 in F major
Just as “K. 358” is a misleading number, so too is “No. 40” for this symphony, because it is in fact one of Haydn’s earlier efforts in the form, contemporary with his Symphonies Nos. 12 and 13. The date is 1763. Although Haydn was already past thirty, all his great works still lay ahead of him. This is not to deny the earlier works their undeniable charm and grace. Here, particular attention should be brought to the delightful slow movement—a fairly quick slow movement, actually—marked Andante più tosto Allegretto. The music has the same kind of perambulating measure we find in Haydn’s “Philosopher” Symphony, No. 22, written the next year, but is perhaps more akin to the Adagio ma semplicemente of the “Schoolmaster” symphony (No. 55) of 1774. In all three of these slow movements one can imagine the gait of a bespectacled, wispy-haired, absent-minded intellectual. A rather old-fashioned minuet follows, with the horns taking the lead in the trio until they hand off to the oboes. The finale is a strict and ingenious fugue, anything but a tedious formal exercise, with its high spirits and infectious melodies.
Mozart: Concertone in C for Two Violins & Orchestra, K. 190
“Concertone”? The title is unique in the standard repertoire and seems to be unique in all the repertoire. (For what it’s worth, I’ve never encountered it elsewhere.) In Vivaldi and Bach’s day, no distinction was made between large or small works in concerto form, but as the 18th century wore on and the scope of the concerto expanded, such distinctions became more useful, so that Haydn, for example, used the name “concertino” for several of his keyboard works, the implication being that these pieces were somewhat smaller than the usual concerto. (That same term, by the way, “concertino,” has an altogether different musical meaning which we won’t bother to define here.) In the sense of “small concerto,” the designation “concertino” was adopted by Weber, Donizetti, and others in the 19th century and really took off in the 20th (Busoni, Wolf-Ferrari, Richard Strauss, Janacek, Lars-Erik Larsson, Virgil Thomson), especially among English and French composers (Berkeley, Ireland, Jacob, Roussel, Jolivet, Ibert, Françaix), but “concertone,” meaning “big concerto,” never caught on. The reason might be that another term, “sinfonia concertante,” did. Mozart went on to write two scores with that title, and it was widely used by other 18th century composers. (Giuseppe Cambini wrote eighty of them! )
For Mozart, the present work for two violins, with oboe and ‘cello solos, was certainly the largest concerto he had written up to that time, running nearly ten minutes longer than his Piano Concerto in D, K. 175, or his First Violin Concerto, K. 209. That work, incidentally, has a higher K. number because, once again, the good Dr. Köchel was in error: the concerto, thought to have been written in the same year as Mozart’s other four authenticated violin concertos in 1775, was actually composed two years earlier. Which brings us to the question of the Concertone’s date. Was it 1773 or 1774?
The confusion arises from the score itself, which plainly states “31 May, 1774,” and Mozart’s own statement elsewhere that it was written in the spring of 1773. That would put it with the Violin Concerto No. 1, which seems unlikely, given the Concertone’s superior quality, whereas 1774 places the piece after other more accomplished scores such as the Symphonies Nos. 25 and 29, the String Quintet in B-flat, K. 174, and—this should come as no surprise—the Duet Sonata heard earlier in this concert! Again we may revert to Wyzéwa and Saint-Foix for the evidence. Those scholars cite structural similarities between the Duet and—another pregnant pause now—the Piano Concerto in D, K. 175, the Symphonies Nos. 25 and 29, and the String Quintet in B-flat, K. 174. (This quintet is much longer than the dozen string quartets Mozart wrote just before, which leads me to wonder why he didn’t call it a “Quintettone”.) Wyzéwa and Saint-Foix draw even stronger comparisons with another symphony of spring 1774, No. 30 in D, K. 202. Moreover, the later year would put the Concertone just before the splendid Violin Concertos Nos. 2 through 5.
Questions of nomenclature and dating aside, the Concertone is a richly rewarding masterpiece, both melodically and harmonically. Edward Tatnall Canby called it “a light hearted piece, almost a divertimento,” which brings us full circle to the title chosen by Mr. Stallman for his Sonata orchestration.
