CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Orchestra of St. Luke's

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 2:00 PM

Orchestra of St. Luke's
Roberto Abbado, Conductor
Andreas Haefliger, Piano

MOZART Symphony No. 35, "Haffner"
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 15 in B-flat Major, K. 450
MOZART Symphony No. 41, "Jupiter"

Program Notes:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

Symphony No. 35 in D Major, K. 385, “Haffner”

The Haffner family of Salzburg has been immortalized through two compositions by Mozart: the “Haffner” Serenade, K. 250 (248b), of 1776 (commissioned for a family wedding), and the “Haffner” Symphony, K. 385, of 1782, which was originally another serenade for use at the celebration given Sigmund Haffner when he was elevated to the nobility. Leopold Mozart urgently requested some suitable music from Wolfgang not long after the younger Mozart’s arrival in Vienna.

Wolfgang’s first reaction was that he was too busy: “I am up to the eyes in work,” he wrote on July 20. But he delivered the score by early August, including an introductory march and two minuets. We know nothing of the performance, though it is likely that Leopold Mozart conducted.

Just before Christmas Mozart asked his father to send the piece back so that he could perform it in a concert during Lent. When it arrived, he wrote: “My new ‘Haffner’ Symphony has positively amazed me, for I had forgotten every single note of it. It must surely produce a good effect.” Still he chose nonetheless to adapt it to the normal pattern of Viennese symphonies—four movements (with only a single minuet)—and added parts for flutes and clarinets, which had been lacking in the serenade version.

Even in its four-movement form, the “Haffner” Symphony still recalls the many earlier serenades Mozart had composed for Salzburg, being generally lighter in construction, more loose-limbed than a work planned as a symphony from the outset. The pomp of the first movement is splendidly worked out with material based almost entirely on the opening gesture, with its dramatic octave leaps or their linear equivalent, running scales in eighths or sixteenths. The Andante is lush and delicately elaborate, filled with those graces we call “Mozartean.” The minuet contrasts a vigorous and festive main section (whose grand melodic leaps remind us of the first movement) to a more graceful Trio.

The finale seems to be a reminiscence—intentional or not?—of Osmin’s comic aria “O wie will ich triumphieren” from The Abduction from the Seraglio. (The opera was premiered just two weeks before the composition of this finale.) Osmin’s aria begins with the same general melodic shape but many repeated notes, which Mozart cut to the witty minimum for his symphonic movement. His satisfaction with the Osmin aria, and his recollection of that recently performed score, may explain the complete fluency with which he noted down this movement in his manuscript, as if in a single sitting. As he correctly recognized, this witty play of dynamics engineering the various returns of the rondo tune was the perfect vehicle to send the audience home in a cheerful mood.


Piano Concerto No. 15 in B-flat Major, K. 450

This concerto is second in an extraordinary string of 12 that Mozart composed between February 1784 and the end of 1786, four of them in rapid succession over just three months. Following the smaller concerto K. 449, in E‑flat Major (composed in February), Mozart completed three concertos on a grander scale on March 15 (K. 450), March 22 (K. 451) and April 12 (K. 453), all clearly designed for the large concert hall. The composer described the first two of these as designed “to make the performer sweat.” Certainly the virtuosic element is vital in the solo part, but equally important is Mozart’s newfound ability to reconcile virtuosity for its own sake with a rich variety of thematic material arranged in a satisfactory symphonic structure.

The B-flat-Major Concerto begins with a surprising (for the time) emphasis on the woodwinds, which characterize the very first phrase. But Mozart showed time and time again—and nowhere more so in these concertos—an extraordinarily refined ear for the possibilities of the winds, alone or in combination. The piano part is a brilliant one, but the atmosphere of the piece remains, on the whole, that of urbane social music, expressing in notes rather than words the art of conversation that was one of the greatest refinements of the 18th century. The opening woodwind figure, with its touch of chromaticism, proves to be the perfect way to lead back to the recapitulation, with hints over a dominant pedal in the strings, then the solo piano, finally resolving to the tonic to give the oboes and bassoons another crack.

The slow movement offers a theme and variations of increasing elegance, beginning with four phrases passed back and forth between the strings and the soloist. There are two further complete statements of the theme, each richly decorated (in different ways) by the soloist, who thoroughly dominates the conversation, finally extending the last statement of the theme’s closing phrase into a short coda.

The finale (which adds a flute to the ensemble required for the rest of the score) is based on a catchy 6/8 tune, redolent of hunting calls but treated by Mozart with wonderful variety and imagination—and almost constant demands on the soloist’s technique as it gallops cheerfully to its close.


Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551, “Jupiter”

Few feats of compositional fluency are as impressive as Mozart’s in composing his last three symphonies during a little more than six weeks in the summer of 1788. Aside from this exceptional speed, the three works cover an extraordinary range of mood and character. Evidently he expected to introduce the three symphonies in a series of subscription concerts, but—as far as we know—the concerts never took place.

The festive formality of the Symphony No. 41 is as different as can be imagined from the preceding G-Minor symphony, K. 550. The nickname “Jupiter” was not attached to this piece until after Mozart’s death; no one seems to know where it came from. Like many inauthentic nicknames for musical compositions, it sticks mainly because it is convenient.

Mozart begins with two brief, strikingly contrasted ideas: a fanfare for the full orchestra followed immediately by a soft lyrical phrase in the strings—two ideas that seem to come from different musical worlds, but Mozart soon links them by adding a single counterpoint for flute and oboes. After a stormy passage for full orchestra, the skies clear again and Mozart offers a whistleable little tune borrowed from an aria he had composed the preceding May (K. 541).

The second movement, calm and serene at the outset, becomes agitated as it moves from F Major to C minor and introduces a figure that seems to change the meter from 3/4 to 2/4; when the thematic material returns, it is decorated in a highly ornate way. The passing chromatic notes so evident throughout Mozart’s previous two symphonies lend a slightly pensive air to the minuet of this one as well.

The finale is the most famous, the most often studied, and the most astonishing movement in the work. Mozart forms his themes out of contrapuntal thematic ideas of venerable antiquity, ideas that can and do combine with one another in an incredible variety of ways. These he lays out in the normal sonata-form pattern. It sounds rather straightforward at first, but gradually we realize that this is going to be a technical showpiece. At the beginning of the development we hear some of the themes not only in their original form but also upside down. New arrangements of the material appear in the recapitulation, but nothing prepares us for the sheer tour de force of the coda, when Mozart brings all of the thematic ideas together in a single contrapuntal unity. The closing pages of the symphony contain the very epitome of contrapuntal skill employed in the service of a musical climax. We end with a sensation produced by more than one passage in Mozart’s works: Everything fits. All the world is in tune.

© 2009 Steven Ledbetter

Steven Ledbetter, musicologist and program annotator of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998, writes and lectures widely
on many aspects of classical music.