Post Description

Recorded at City Halls, Glasgow, UK from 11-17 July 2009
Engineered by Philip Hobbs
Edited, mixed and mastered by Julia Thomas, Finesplice, UK
Design by John Haxby, Art Surgery
Cover painting courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library: View of the Gardens and Palace of the Tuileries from the Quai d'Orsay, 1813 (oil on canvas) by Bouhot, Etienne (1780-1862) Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France.
Photo of Sir Charles Mackerras by Clive Barda
Colour photo of SCO by Paul Hampton 

Mozart Symphonies 29, 31 (Paris), 32, 35 (Haffner) & 36 (Linz) 

The five symphonies presented on this recording date from 1774 to 1783. This was a decade of decisive professional change for Mozart, in which his stable ‘feudal' period as Konzertmeister at the Salzburg court was interrupted by an unsuccessful and tragic journey to Mannheim and Paris in 1777-8, and brought to an end by his permanent move to Vienna and a freelance existence in 1781. These years saw the end of Mozart's dramatic apprenticeship with La finta giardiniera in 1774-5 and his first mature operatic masterpieces Idomeneo (1780-81) and Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1781-2). He also made significant strides in several instrumental genres. Among an impressive crop of instrumental pieces are the ‘Jeunehomme' Piano Concerto K.271 (1777), the last four violin concertos (all in 1775), the Sinfonia Concertante K.364 (1779), the three subscription concertos for piano (K.413-415, 1782-3), no less than thirteen piano sonatas, and the first three string quartets dedicated to Haydn (1782-3). With all this varied activity it is not surprising that the rate at which Mozart produced symphonies slowed significantly. But, at the same time, the individual character of his symphonies became stronger during this period, and stylistic lessons learned in other genres left clear marks on these works. His handling of the orchestra (and in particular the winds) became more confident and imaginative; his operatic experience lent his symphonies a greater gestural and expressive flexibility; from the chamber music and the concertos comes a more subtle sense of musical dialogue and how this can be harnessed to the logical continuities of musical content (which Leopold Mozart called ‘il filo'). 

In the five symphonies recorded here Mozart was responding to different circumstances: local conditions in Salzburg; a public concert in Paris; the opportunity to adapt a commission, originally conceived for a Salzburg audience, for the Viennese public; and the necessity to dash off a symphony for a hastily-arranged concert in Linz. Four of these works were later revised by the composer, with changes ranging from the retouching of details in K.425, through the addition of extra instruments in K.318 and K.385, to the substitution of the entire central movement of K.297. The exception is K.201, which may not have been revived by the composer in Vienna, but whose jewel-like perfection must at any rate have been as apparent to Mozart then as it is to us now. 

Symphony No.29 in A major K.201 (186a), written in Salzburg and dated 6 April 1774, is one of Mozart's first masterpieces. He had written two earlier symphonies in A major (K.114 from December 1771 and K.134 from August 1772), both of which have charm and finesse; but the present work's formal ambition, expressive range and technical sophistication place it in an altogether different class. Just a few months after his eighteenth birthday, Mozart was fully in control of his craft and - despite his limited orchestral canvas of two oboes, two horns and strings - he wrote with an unmistakably individual voice, espousing the musical values that were to underpin his later symphonies. 

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