Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
b. 27 January 1756 in Salzburg, Austria; d. 5 December 1791 in Vienna, Austria
Symphony no. 31 in D Major (Paris), K. 297 (300a). Premiered 18 June 1778 in Paris, age 22.
Mozart’s visit to Paris was one stop on a lengthy tour undertaken in hopes of finding a job in a good-sized city with higher-quality work, better pay, and more prestige. Wolfgang and his mother left Salzburg on 23 September 1777, leaving Leopold and sister Nannerl at home. The first stop was in Munich for about a month, followed by an extended visit to Mannheim, in those days a musically exciting town. They arrived in Paris on 23 March 1778. Besides finding only occasional work, Mozart’s difficulties were multiplied when his mother took sick and died on 3 July. Taking leave of Paris on 26 September, Mozart retraced his steps to Mannheim, then to Munich, and finally returned to Salzburg in the third week of January 1779 without having found that elusive better job.
In Paris the prestigious concert organization was the Concert spirituel, though it was said the Concert des amateurs had the better orchestra. As it happened, Mozart was introduced to Joseph le Gros of the Concert spirituel, and it was for that organization that Mozart composed the “Paris” Symphony. Mozart took care to present himself at his creative best while at the same time keeping in mind what succeeded with Paris audiences. D major was a brilliant, festive key in which trumpets and drums worked well. Furthermore, Mozart was especially pleased to get to write for a large string section and a wind section that included clarinets—new instruments that hadn’t gotten to Salzburg yet.
The forceful unison opening of the first movement is a “Parisian” touch; for the third movement finale the composer chose to play a game with the audience. Wolfgang wrote home to Leopold on 3 July 1778, “because I heard that here all last as well as first Allegros begin with all the instruments playing together and usually unisono, I began mine with [the two violin sections] only, piano for the first eight bars—thereupon there was immediately a forte; the audience (as I expected) said “Shh!” at the piano—then came the forte, and they began at once to clap their hands.” Wolfgang also wrote how badly the rehearsal went, and he spent an anxiety-ridden night before the premiere. The concert itself went well, so much so that Mozart celebrated at the Palais royal with a large ice.
Notwithstanding the audience’s response, M. le Gros told Mozart that he wasn’t really happy with the Andante, the second of the three movements: “he says there are too many modulations in it—and [it’s] too long.” Mozart thereupon composed a second, completely different Andante that was used in a second performance of the symphony on 15 August. Thus we have two slow movements for this symphony and no conclusive evidence regarding which was composed first. It is traditionally thought that the movement in 6/8 is the first one, with the movement in 3/4 coming second; Alan Tyson in recent years has argued for a reversed sequence. Maestro Bay has selected the Andante in 6/8 for tonight’s performance.
Maurice Ravel
b. 7 March 1875 in Ciboure, southwestern France; d. 28 December 1937 in Paris.
Concerto for Piano Left-Hand. Composed 1929-30, age 54-55.
During his student years, Ravel’s instrument was the piano, and the piano formed a kind of anchor to his musical thought throughout his career despite his brilliance as an orchestrator. His writing for the piano was virtuosic, frequently compared to that of Liszt. This makes it all the more intriguing that Ravel’s two piano concertos were his last two compositions with orchestra to be completed, and that Ravel composed them simultaneously.
Ravel was dealing with several kinds of change in the years following the First World War. He was an ambulance driver during the war and thus learned of its horrors at first hand. His father had died in 1908, but the sudden death of his mother in 1917, with whom he was close, was a shock. Claude Debussy, whom Ravel admired greatly though they weren’t personal friends, died in 1918, in the wake of which Ravel came to be considered France’s leading living composer. His international esteem was increasing also, with several concert tours taking place during the 1920s. Thus his initial plan with the Piano Concerto in G was to play it himself, though by the time of the premiere he chose to conduct the piece and invited Marguerite Long to play the solo part.
At approximately the same time Ravel was contacted by Paul Wittgenstein, a Viennese pianist who had lost his right arm in the war. He was having remarkable success building a performing career and also commissioned numerous composers to write pieces for him. Thus during 1929-1930 Ravel worked on both compositions, each providing a change of pace from work on the other. The Concerto in G is lighthearted, almost comic at times, laid out in the traditional three movements. The Concerto for Piano Left-Hand, while clearly in D major, is in a far more serious mood and built as a single movement.
The opening emerges from silence from the very lowest instruments of the orchestra, including solos for contrabassoon and horns that anticipate important themes. Other instruments join in, with a harmony built on A taking shape. The piano bursts in with the first cadenza, taking over the harmony from the orchestra and resolving it to D, the home key of the work. The main theme is stated in full, with a gentle dotted rhythm and a climbing contour.
While the concerto is in one movement, there are three distinct sections that definitely echo the traditional three-movement structure. The central section is in a brisker tempo that starts like a march and a melody that bounces down the scale. A second melody emphasizes a “blue” minor third over a major-triad harmony. The third section mirrors the first, with another substantial cadenza for the piano, eventually bringing the themes from the middle section into conjunction with the main material.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Concerto in F Major for Two Pianos, K. 242. Autograph score dated February 1776, composed in Salzburg, age 20.
The list of Mozart’s piano concertos begins with seven pieces that were arrangements of other composers’ solo compositions to which Mozart added orchestra parts. Only two original concertos precede K. 242 (K. 175 in D and K. 238 in B-flat). On the other hand, the second piano concerto composed after K. 242 would be the Concerto in E-flat, K. 271, one of the first of Mozart’s works that displayed not simply tremendous talent but transcendent genius as well. Tonight’s concerto is a lovely showpiece that displays remarkable skill in making two pianos sound beautiful together—with some witty dialogue between them too—while also integrating the pianos wonderfully with the orchestra.
The Concerto in F, originally written for three solo pianos and orchestra, was commissioned by the Countess Antonia Lodron for herself and her daughters, Aloisia and Josepha. There are two additional documented performances of this version, one in Augsburg on 22 October 1777 with Mozart participating and again in Mannheim on 12 March 1778 (both of them part of the long tour that Wolfgang made with his mother). Mozart also transcribed the three original solo parts for two pianos, the version performed this evening. This version was performed by Wolfgang and Nannerl in Salzburg on 3 September 1780, so it is thought that Mozart prepared the two-piano version during 1779.
Mozart follows the classical three-movement concerto pattern, and if one listens too casually the pianos sound like a nice solo part in a conventional piano concerto. But phrases are exchanged in dialogue, and sometimes the dialogue occurs within the phrase, as well as Mozart enriching the overall texture of the solo parts and using the pianists’ four hands to achieve colorful yet elegant music from the instruments. The composer also jokes with his audience in the third movement, bringing the music to what sounds like a nice conclusion—but the pianos after a moment of silence launch into a cadenza, after which the orchestra returns for the real finish.
Maurice Ravel
Rapsodie espagnole. Composed 1907-08, age 32-33.
The village where Ravel was born is on the Atlantic Ocean, deep in the southwest corner of France. His father was Swiss and his mother was Basque. Ciboure is almost directly north of Pamplona, Spain, and a little more than 100 miles southwest of Bordeaux. His family moved to Paris when Maurice was three months old, and Paris was Ravel’s base of operations for much of his life, but he always had a place in his heart for Spain. Of course, many French composers composed wonderful music in the Spanish style, but in Ravel’s case that Spanish sense was partly in his genes. Keep in mind too that most of the best Spanish composers around the turn of the twentieth century spent time in Paris, so there was a stylistic exchange flowing in two directions.
There is one published orchestral work that preceded the Rapsodie espagnole, and that was Une barque sur l’océan, the 1906 orchestration of the third movement of Miroirs for piano of 1904-05. One movement of the Rapsodie is an orchestration of a piano piece, the Habanera, composed in 1895 as the first of two Sites auriculairs for two pianos.
The Rapsodie‘s first movement is a magical moonlit scene unfolding beneath an ostinato beginning in the violins (which, for you technicians, is a segment of an octatonic scale). Dance rhythms dominate the following movements. The Malagueña has an ostinato also, carried in the bass line. In both the Malagueña and the concluding Feria, material from the first movement (especially the ostinato) returns, providing a musical thread to tie the movements closer together. While the dances are stylistically transformed in the central movements, the final movement is more direct in its invocation of Spain, with plenty of percussion including castanets.
©2009 David Mead
