Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra in C, K.299/297c in 1778. It is one of only two true double concertos that he wrote, as well as the only piece of music that Mozart wrote that contains the harp. It was commisioned by Adrien-Louis de Bonnières, duc de Guînes, for his use and for that of his older daughter, Marie-Louise-Philippine. At the time, the harp was still in development, and was not considered a standard instrument, and Mozart's opinion of it was at best dubious, as he never again composed for it. In fact, the harp part appears to be more like an adaptation of a piano part. The piece is essentially in the form of a Sinfonia Concertante, which was extremely popular in Paris at the time. The piece is one of the most popular such concerti in the repertoire, as well as often being found on recordings dedicated otherwise to either one of its featured instruments. Eventually Mozart came to despise the nobleman who commissioned it, who never paid the composer for this work.
Source: musopen.org
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It was long assumed that Mozart's earliest wind concerto, and his only one for bassoon (he may have composed three or four others, now lost), was written for the bassoon-playing baron Thaddäus von Dürnitz. But, as scholars now agree, this is jumping the gun: Mozart only met Dürnitz in Munich in December 1774, whereas the Bassoon Concerto in B flat major, K.191/186e, bears the date 4 June 1774. We can guess that he wrote it for one or other of the bassoonists in the Salzburg Court Orchestra, Melchior Sandmayr (who also played the oboe – wind players were expected to multi-task in those days) or Johann Heinrich Schulz. Perhaps they both played the concerto at different times. The eighteen-year-old Mozart gives full rein to the bassoon's clownish side in the first movement's quickfire repeated notes and vertiginous leaps, with the instrument morphing between high tenor and basso profundo. But during the eighteenth century the instrument had become mellower and more expressive. By the turn of the nineteenth Koch's Musikalisches Lexicon dubbed the bassoon "Ein Instrument der Liebe" ("an instrument of love"). Mozart duly exploited its potential for eloquent cantabile and, especially in the slow movement, the peculiar plangency of its high tenor register.
A decade later, in his great Viennese piano concertos, Mozart liked to work with an expansive array of themes. Scored for a small orchestra of oboes, horns (which in the key of B flat lend a ringing brilliance to the tuttis) and strings, the bassoon concerto is a much more compact affair. In the first movement Mozart contents himself with just two subjects: the proudly striding, wide-ranging opening theme, perfectly fashioned for the bassoon (the wide leaps here sound dignified rather than comical), and a second theme featuring spiky violin staccatos against sustained oboes and horns. The bassoon later adorns this with its own countermelody. Then in the recapitulation the roles are reversed, with the bassoon playing the staccato tune and the violins the countermelody – a delicately witty touch.
As in Mozart's violin concertos of 1775, the slow movement, with muted violins and violas, is a tender operatic aria reimagined in instrumental terms. The opening phrase is a favourite Mozartian gambit that will reach its apogee in the Countess's "Porgi amor" in Le nozze di Figaro. As in a heartfelt opera seria aria, the soloist's leaps and plunges are now charged with intense expressiveness. For his finale Mozart writes a rondo in minuet tempo, a fashionable form in concertos of the 1760s and 1770s. With its frolicking triplets and semiquavers, the bassoon delights in undercutting the galant formality of the refrain. When the soloist finally gets to play the refrain, its Till Eulenspiegel irreverence seems to infect the orchestra. First and second violins dance airily around the bassoon, oboes cluck approvingly. The soloist then bows out with a cheeky flourish, leaving the final tutti to restore decorum.
Source: Richard Wigmore, 2015 (hyperion-records.co.uk)
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Although the prevailing image of Mozart the performer is that of a pianist, the part played by the violin in his early development as a musician was hardly less important. How, indeed, could it be otherwise when his father and teacher, Leopold, was the author of Violinschule, one of the eighteenth century's most influential treatises on violin technique? Accounts of the child-prodigy’s triumphs around Europe suggest that, at that stage at least, he was equally proficient on violin and keyboard, and right into the mid-1770s his letters home to his family contained reports of public appearances as a violinist. "I played Vanhal's Violin Concerto in B flat, which was unanimously applauded", he wrote from Augsburg in 1777. "In the evening at supper I played my Strasbourg Concerto, which went like oil. Everyone praised my beautiful, pure tone."
Despite these peripatetic successes, it was Salzburg that was really the spiritual home of Mozart's violin music. It was there – where violin concerto movements were as likely to be heard as outdoor evening entertainment music or as an embellishment to a church service as in a concert hall – that he first played a concerto at the age of seven, later toiled in the court orchestra, and, between 1773 and 1775, composed his five violin concertos. They may not always probe the depths of his later, Viennese piano concertos, but it is true to say that they all show some degree of Mozartian inspiration, often of the most ravishing kind. For the accent here is not on technical brilliance but on lyricism and an eloquent personal expressiveness which we now recognise as being unique to the composer, but which at the time marked a new stage in his artistic development. As he once wrote to his father after hearing another violinist play a particularly demanding concerto, "I am no lover of difficulties".
Mozart composed his first violin concerto – his first concerto for any instrument – in 1773. The remaining four were written in rapid succession during the latter half of 1775. The Fourth is dated October 1775, following hard on the heels of the well-known Violin Concerto No.3, a work which had shown a considerable leap in creative assurance over its predecessors. The Fourth exudes the same newfound confidence, yet compared to the Third it is a less dreamy work, bolder and cleaner. The first movement is lean and muscular, but at the same time maintains an elegant clarity and grace. The Third had revelled in delicate dialogue between soloist and orchestra, but the Fourth allows the violin to indulge in a more continuous flow of melody, with the orchestra providing a supportive role. As ever in his concertos, Mozart also shows skill and imagination in the ordering and handling of his various themes. The little fanfare with which the movement opens, for instance, returns to inaugurate the fi rst solo, its reappearance in a higher register transforming it into a lyrical statement. After that it is not heard again.
The radiant Andante cantabile extends the dominance of the soloist, for after the orchestra's opening statement, it is the violin that carries the song-like melody almost without interruption. This is violin writing of the most serenely classical kind, making use both of the instrument's clear higher register and of the soulful richness of its lower strings.
The finale is a Rondo in which Mozart delights in keeping the listener guessing by constantly hopping between two different musical ideas – the poised Andante grazioso with which it opens, and the tripping Allegro, which interrupts its every appearance. And if there is a hint of pastoral dance about the latter, there is no mistaking the folk-music inspiration for the episode which occurs about halfway through the movement, when an exaggeratedly powdered French-style gavotte turns up, followed by a more rustic tune with bagpipe-like drones from the soloist. It would be a mistake, however, to imagine Mozart empathising too strongly with the lot of country folk; this is a rural world whose origins lie more in the make-believe of French ballet than in the realities of the Austrian countryside. Even so, it has a pleasantly calming atmosphere of its own, and helps to lead the concerto towards a conclusion charmingly free of bombast.
Source: Lindsay Kemp, 2018 (hyperion-records.co.uk)
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