About a week and a half ago I jumped into my car to run an errand, the radio popped on, and the announcer revealed that I had just missed a violin sonata by Mozart.
A violin sonata? I’m aware of Mozart’s piano sonatas – the second movement from one of them even made it onto my list of Top 100 Classical Music Favorites (HERE) – but violin sonatas? I hadn’t heard of these pieces – OR – if I have heard them on the radio, I s’pose that I just wasn’t paying attention. Long story short: I decided to listen to one of Mozart’s violin sonatas as my featured piece for the week (turns out he wrote 36 of them – info HERE), and I picked number 25 in F major at random. And no surprise – I got what I expected: a delightful piece of violin music – accompanied by the piano – written in three movements:
However, in relation to that “accompanied by the piano” comment, check this out from a blog piece by the LA Philharmonic: “In addition to everything else – composer of astonishing invention and fluency, virtuoso pianist, all-round boy wonder – Mozart was an accomplished violinist and violist. He could hardly have avoided it, as his father Leopold was a master violinist and the author of the leading violin manual of the day. So it is hardly surprising that Mozart composed a number of sonatas for violin and piano – or rather, for piano with violin. In the duo sonatas that Mozart composed throughout his career, there is a constant development of equality in the partnership, which initially placed the burden entirely on the keyboard and left the string part almost optional.” Of course – LOL – I was, in fact, surprised that there were so many of these pieces – new classical music territory for me – but the unnamed bloggist hit the piano/violin relationship nail on the head. Here’s how the sonata is described in the article (HERE): “The first movement is driven by the energy of fleet triplets flowing between the instruments as they trade melody and accompaniment. The second movement is an extraordinary set of variations in D minor. The Minuet finale, complete with a contrasting Trio section in B-flat, reduces the violin to its most subservient role.” Still, the piece is enjoyable – though it includes nothing as catchy or as memorable as Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” his Ronda Alla Turca, his overture to The Marriage of Figaro, the “Elvira Madigan” theme found in his Piano Concerto No. 21, and so on. Still, the piece is pleasant, breezy, and likable enough that I plan to investigate more of these works by Mozart. Coincidentally – in a Baader-Meinhof moment the other night – I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I put in my earbuds and listened to a bit of classical music to see if that might help. I clicked on my I-Heart-Radio app and listened to KUSC out of Los Angeles, and I caught the tail-end of a pleasant, breezy and likeable enough piece. The announcer then came on and told me that it was Mozart’s violin sonata number 36. A sure sign that I need to listen to more of these works!
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About a year and a half ago I posted my Top 100 favorite pieces of classical music. The list (not ranked in any way) is HERE, and all four of Wolfgang Mozart’s French horn concertos are on it (I lumped all four together as one entry).
This week I thought I’d listen to another horn concerto by Mozart, but not one by Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart – otherwise known as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. No, this concerto is by his father, Leopold – Johann Georg Leopold Mozart, to be exact. I know a little bit about Leopold Mozart – and not just because I’ve seen both the live stage production and the movie “Amadeus” (many years ago I saw Ian McKellan as Salieri and Tim Curry as Wolfgang Mozart on Broadway). Shortly after seeing Peter Shaffer’s play, I also read a biography on Mozart so I learned a bit about Mozart's father Leopold. However, I can’t say that I’ve ever heard anything by Leopold Mozart, so I decided to pick something of his to listen to this week. I selected his horn concerto since all four of the other Mozart’s horn concertos landed on my Top 100 list. I found very little information about this concerto on the internets, as they say. I did see one horn concerto listed on an inventory of works by Leopold Mozart, HERE. However, that concerto is shown as having four movements: Allegro moderato; Menuet; Andante; and Allegro (HERE). The concerto I listened to on YouTube, linked HERE, seems only to have three movements: Allegro moderato; Andante; and Allegro. The YouTube video runs just over thirteen minutes (13:05), and the concerto listed on the log at AllMusic.com comes in at 13:27 – but with four movements – so I’m not so sure they’re the same piece. The concerto by Leopold Mozart was certainly pleasant enough to listen to. However, it was in no way as memorable, spirited or as lyrical as those by his son Wolfgang. To be honest, the opening strains of the work from the orchestra and the horn sound more like a practice exercise and that sets the tone for most of the work. It comes across more as a recital piece for a horn student rather than a refined and sophisticated piece in the horn repertoire. Still, as I said earlier, the work is pleasant enough so it is definitely worth a listen! : )
Last week I listened to, commented on, and rated Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos, HERE. That made me wonder as to whether or not anyone had composed a concerto for three pianos. I ran a Google-search on “concerto for three pianos,” and I was completely surprised by what popped up: Almost all of the information centered on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 7, K. 242 (info HERE).
I had no idea that Mozart had written a concerto for three pianos. Interestingly enough, the day before I had listened to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27. In the second movement of that concerto, marked “Larghetto,” there are lengthy passages of the piano playing nothing more than a single note at a time, and I remember thinking about how Mozart had achieved such beauty with such a simple approach – a simple melody played by one key at a time, accompanied by mellifluous strings. That made me wonder – if Mozart could compose such a beautiful work with just one key at a time, what might he have accomplished when working with 264 keys (i.e., three pianos)? Therefore, I decided to listen to his Piano Concerto No. 7 this week. The concerto is composed of three movements (I. Allegro; II. Adagio; III. Rondo: Tempo di minuetto), and it has a very distinct Mozart sound to it – that is, upon hearing the concerto for the first time, I suspect any fan of classical music would say, “oh, that sounds like it was written by Mozart.” It has all the hallmarks of his work: simplicity, delicacy, clarity, an emphasis on elegance and balance, and dulcet melodies with some use of counterpoint. The concerto does not include any particularly memorable melody lines (which Mozart wrote so often), but it certainly is pleasing to listen to. To be honest, the work doesn’t even seem to be remarkable in any way in that it was written for three pianos. When listening to it, I rarely thought, “wow – that sounds like three pianos”; instead I think Mozart could have accomplished the same result with just two pianos -- or maybe even one piano with two pianists. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 7 is certainly a fine and pleasing work, but nothing spectacular. Hmm. I wonder if anyone has ever written a concerto for four pianos? SPOILER ALERT: The answer is yes – and once again, I was completely surprised when I ran a Google-search for “concerto for four pianos.”
This week I thought I would listen to a new piece (i.e., new to me) by one of the big names in classical music, and I picked Mozart at random. I ran a list of works by Mozart, and also at random I picked the Piano Quartet in G Minor. Mozart wrote two piano quartets – one in G Minor and one in E Flat Major – and according to an article at Classical Net, HERE, “Mozart seems to have invented the piano quartet. No one has found examples among his contemporaries or immediate predecessors, not even in Haydn, a prolific inventor of new instrumental combinations. Mozart left only these two examples, but they count among the very best.” I listened to the G Minor Quartet several times this week, and at this point, I’m beginning to think that I have, in fact, heard this work before – I just didn’t recognize the title “Piano Quartet in G Minor” (or Piano Quartet No. 1”) as one I had previously heard. It’s the third movement that sounded most familiar to me. Sooo – have I heard it before? Or did I just listen to it enough times this week to begin thinking that maybe I have heard it before? Who knows. Anyway, the work is a very enjoyable piece – and one that I think would be very fun to play – and it is most certainly one that is typical of Mozart’s style and sound. The quartet is very structured and balanced, and it is light, airy, and energetic. The first movement centers on a somewhat stern six-note theme that opens the work: Mozart then develops the opening movement with numerous variations on that theme.
The second movement – though not necessarily one of the most beautiful melodies ever written by Mozart – is beautiful nonetheless. The third and final movement, a Rondo in G Major, is bright and spirited. It is free of the “sturm and drang” (HERE) that was so pervasive in the opening movement. I’ll admit, when I hum songs to myself, various parts of Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” are some of my frequent “go to” tunes that I hum. While I did enjoy Mozart’s first piano quartet. I don’t think I’ll be humming the melodies from this one all that often. : )
For this week, I thought I would turn to a big-name composer -- someone like Bach, Brahms or Beethoven -- and listen to a piece I had never heard before. I listen to classical music daily (usually via my local radio station WVTF and also WQXR out of New York), so I’m familiar with a lot of classical music, but I certainly can’t say I’ve heard everything the major composers have written. About a year or so before the pandemic, I travelled to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, for a concert that featured Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, one of my favorites. However, the program also included Tchaikovsky’s “The Tempest.” I’d never heard nor heard of that piece. I knew Tchaikovsky wrote an orchestral fantasy based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” but I didn’t know he’d composed any other work based on Shakespeare. Oh em gee -- “The Tempest” was awful. I would have to say it was one of the worst things I’ve heard in concert. I can understand why the piece is not played regularly or included on “greatest hits” albums and CDs of Tchaikovsky. I ran a Google-search on “The Tempest” and found this information, a passage written by the composer himself after hearing the work in concert in 1879: “Today's performance of The Tempest did not please me. Its form is too long, episodic and unbalanced. The effect of these disconnected episodes produces a lack of movement and coherency. It grieves me to admit that I could be responsible for something so unsuccessful at its performances, and incomprehensible to the public" Sooo...back to my decision to listen to a never-heard-before piece by a major composer. I wondered if I would have another experience similar to the Tchaikovsky/Tempest incident? Would I find some long-lost or neglected work by one of the greats that has fallen out favor with the public for good reason? To select a piece, I ran a Google-search on “least known works by Mozart,” and I found this article, “Discover the 10 most unfairly neglected Mozart works,” HERE. It was here I found Mozart’s “Piano Duet Sonata in F, K497,” coming in at number 5 on the list. A piano duet sonata? I didn’t even realize that such a thing existed (and I play the piano). I had no idea that Mozart wrote piano sonatas for both two pianos and for one piano, four hands.
Another article I found about the piece said this:
"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart entered his Sonata for piano duet in F major, K. 497, into his personal catalog of works on August 1, 1786, 12 years after he had composed his last sonata for piano duet. Prior to 1786, he had composed three sonatas for piano duet for himself and his sister. But after he left Salzburg for Vienna, Mozart no longer had his sister at hand, and his production of duet sonatas abruptly stopped. Indeed, he was to write only one more sonata in 1787 for piano duet before he stopped writing piano duets altogether. The four-movement Sonata in F major is in the form of a church sonata opening with an Adagio followed by an Allegro di molto, an Andante, and an unmarked closing movement that is self-evidently an Allegro. Although the virtuoso technique and witty dialogue of the players is as elegant as earlier, the tender charm of his youthful music is replaced by a more self-consciously bright and brilliant elegance of his mature music." Oh, the sonata is bright and elegant -- and very Mozart-y to be sure; however, to be honest, it just didn’t do a whole lot for me. Generally my reaction to the entire piece was kinda “meh” -- but in a very positive way. It is certainly very charming to listen to, and it makes for lovely background music. I just don’t think I’d queue this up often to listen to again, and if I were going to select something to play by Mozart, it would not be this. Interestingly, some phrases in the second movement kept niggling me. Had I heard the piece before? No, but it sure sounded the same or very similar to some other piece by Mozart -- but what? It was driving me crazy -- and then I scrolled through the comments on the YouTube video and found this: “The andante sounds just like the second movement of K 495"; click HERE. (Thank you to listener "StevemStevenson" for posting that comment and link!) : ) Overall, Mozart's Piano Sonata in F Major for Four Hands rated BLUE for me on my scale of Red to Green (below), and I suppose in the coming days I can check out some of the other pieces on Gramophone's list of neglected works by Mozart. Maybe some of them will rate higher? |
A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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