‘The Scholarly Virtuoso’ was born Joseph ‘Jóska’ Singer to a Jewish family in Budapest, becoming ‘Szigeti’ when, following his mother’s death when he was three, he lived with his grandparents in Máramaros-Sziget. Here he was surrounded by music, the town band being almost entirely comprised of his uncles, one of whom started him on the violin when he was six.

Like compatriots Vecsey, Telmányi, d’Arányi, Végh and Geyer, Szigeti was taught in the Hungarian tradition by Joachim’s former pupil Jenő Hubay, already one of the pre-eminent teachers in Europe. In 1905 Hubay took him to play for Joachim in Berlin but Szigeti declined to take tuition from the aged master.

A Berlin debut in 1905 was followed by his first tour of England, where he premiered the first work dedicated to him, Hamilton Harty’s Violin Concerto. He also toured with Nellie Melba, Ferruccio Busoni and others, the latter becoming his mentor and prompting him to develop the intellectual approach that earned him his nickname.

Following a bout of tuberculosis, during which he was reacquainted with Bartók who was at the same sanatorium recovering from pneumonia, Szigeti succeeded Marteau as Professor of Violin at the Geneva Conservatoire in 1917. Although he was often frustrated by the mediocrity of the students, the environment enabled him to deepen his own understanding of performance as an art.

In 1925 Szigeti was invited by Leopold Stokowski to make his American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was disappointed, however, by the repertoire popular in American concert halls at the time: showy salon pieces which he considered somewhat juvenile. He often quoted one impresario as saying: ‘Well, let me tell you, Mister Dzigedy – and I know what I’m talking about – your Krewtzer Sonata bores the pants off my audiences!’

A strong advocate of new music who consciously cultivated working relationships with composers, Szigeti enjoyed the ‘living’ aspect of preparing and interpreting fresh works and extended this ethos to older repertoire. Amongst notable pieces written for him are Bloch’s Violin Concerto and Ysaÿe’s Solo Sonata No. 1; also Bartók’s Rhapsody No. 1 and Contrasts (the latter commissioned by Szigeti himself with Benny Goodman). Aside from modern interests he was an ardent admirer of Bach’s solo partitas and sonatas, considering them ‘the core of a violinist’s life’.

Szigeti recorded extensively from the 1930s to 1950s when arthritis began to affect his playing, although this did not stop audiences flocking to hear him. When he retired from performing and returned to Switzerland in 1960 he continued to teach and travelled regularly to judge violin competitions, perhaps with the hope of redeeming what he considered a badly flawed system of promoting or rejecting young artists. In Szigeti on the Violin he poured contempt on the whole phenomenon, writing: ‘[…] this gamble on the unforeseeable chances at competition is incompatible with the slow maturing either of the performing personality or of the repertoire […] which only contact with the public, its resonance, its rejections, can bring about.’

Sampling Szigeti’s discography is difficult as so many recordings are historically significant: the 1939 recording of Bloch’s Concerto in A minor, written for him, with Charles Munch and the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra; the fascinating 1940 Library of Congress recording of the Beethoven, Debussy and Bartók sonatas with Bartók at the piano. Others are seminal in terms of repertoire, such as his 1946 complete unaccompanied Bach. This is, therefore, but a limited cross-section.

From Baroque repertoire, mention should be made of the classic 1937 recording of Bach’s Double Concerto with Carl Flesch. Often linked to the slightly earlier Menuhin/Enescu pairing, this seems now a very dated understanding of the work but one that nevertheless epitomises pre-war interpretations. Of the Classical period, an aristocratic reading of Mozart’s Concerto No. 4 with Thomas Beecham and the London Symphony Orchestra displays Szigeti’s fine crafting (and Beecham’s prowess as a Mozartian). The slow movement is especially insightful, notwithstanding a characteristically diffuse, Hubayesque G-string vibrato. Equally considered is his 1932 recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto under Bruno Walter, although his entire Beethoven sonata cycle recorded with Claudio Arrau at the Library of Congress in 1944 should perhaps receive pride of place, evidencing as it does a very lively and colourful set of readings, notably in the vibrant and assertive Op. 12 No. 1.

In nineteenth-century works Szigeti shows himself to be, spiritually at least, an heir to the Joachim tradition (even though his prominent vibrato would doubtless have received Joachim’s censure). Thus we find a distinguished performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto under Beecham (1933) and an interesting 1928 version of Brahms’s Concerto with the Hallé Orchestra under one of its greatest conductors, Hamilton Harty. Szigeti’s straightforward and, in many ways, modern account of the Brahms testifies to his thoughtfulness and is one of the earliest complete recordings of this work: it was yet to become fully established in repertoire and Marie Soldat- Röger, who gave the Vienna premiere in Brahms’s presence, was still an active exponent of it. Harty provides a colourful orchestral backdrop, enlivened by prominent string portamenti and a volatile approach to tempo.

Twentieth-century repertoire is well represented including the first recording (in 1935) of Prokofiev’s Concerto in D in which Szigeti’s rich romantic tone softens the edges of an occasionally austere work. Szigeti’s important discs made with Bartók in the US include the famous 1940 recording of Contrasts with Benny Goodman. This is a highly successful partnership in which Goodman’s elasticity complements Bartók’s rhythmic accents, both being offset by Szigeti’s deep, haunting and authentically Hungarian violin tone. Szigeti also recorded Ives’s Sonata No. 4 (which he had premiered) with Andor Foldes in 1942, although this is rather less convincing with a thick tone and out-of-tune piano.

Stylistically, Szigeti’s playing retains the heritage of an earlier Hungarian style and it is notable how Hubay’s slow and persistent vibrato is present. In spite of Szigeti’s reputation as a scholarly player, there is little variation in approach between works of different styles, save perhaps for a reticence with romantic gestures in earlier works. More enduring, though, is the extraordinary level of involvement his playing arouses in the listener.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Milsom (A–Z of String Players, Naxos 8.558081-84)

One of the finest orchestras on the international stage, the London Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1932 by Sir Thomas Beecham. Subsequent principal conductors have included Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. In 2007 Vladimir Jurowski became the orchestra’s current principal conductor.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra has been performing at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall since it opened in 1951, becoming resident orchestra in 1992. Each summer it plays for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where it has been resident symphony orchestra for over 50 years. It also performs regularly around the UK and frequently tours abroad.

The orchestra broadcasts regularly on television and radio, and has recorded soundtracks for numerous films including The Lord of the Rings. In summer 2012 the orchestra was chosen to record all the world’s national anthems for the London 2012 Olympics. In 2005 it began releasing live, studio and archive recordings on its own CD label.

lpo.org.uk

Photo: Patrick Harrison

The English conductor Sir Thomas Beecham was born into a wealthy family which had made its fortune through the manufacture and sale of proprietary medicines, yet by the time he was thirty he had established himself as Britain’s finest conductor, without any financial support from his father. He attended his first concert when he was six, and commenced piano lessons shortly afterwards. Educated at Rossall School where he was the only pupil to be allowed a piano in his room, he went on to Wadham College at Oxford, but did not stay to take a degree. In 1899, having formed an amateur orchestra in his home town of St Helens, he substituted for Hans Richter as the conductor of the Hallé Orchestra, which had been engaged to give a concert to mark Beecham’s father’s assumption of the position of mayor of the town of St Helens.

After falling out with his father Beecham travelled to Paris at the turn of the century. Here he took a few lessons in orchestration privately with Moritz Moszkowski and also researched much French music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He also studied with Charles Wood in London. In 1902 he secured a conducting engagement with the Imperial Grand Opera Company, and made his debut directing Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl. In 1906 Beecham was invited to become conductor of the New Symphony Orchestra, formed by freelance orchestral players in London, and remained with this orchestra until 1908. These early concerts were not only successful, but also brought him into contact with Frederick Delius, of whose music Beecham became a passionate advocate. In 1909 he formed the Beecham Symphony Orchestra, which included many of London’s finest musicians and was led by Albert Sammons whom Beecham had heard playing in a restaurant orchestra at the Waldorf Hotel.

In 1910 father and son, now reconciled and backed by the senior Beecham’s financial investment, jointly presented the first of Thomas Beecham’s many seasons of opera in London, with Richard Strauss and Bruno Walter as guest conductors (Beecham in fact gave the first performances in Britain of five of Strauss’s operas during his career). The success of Beecham’s conducting of Die Fledermaus and Les Contes d’Hoffmann saw him entering the recording studio for the first time, to record excerpts from these two works. During the following year, 1911, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes appeared for the first time in London, and on the company’s return in 1912 Beecham conducted several performances. Father and son went on to present two further seasons by this great company in 1913 and one in 1914, all in London. These seasons introduced English audiences to the music of Stravinsky and Ravel, as well as that of Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. During World War I Beecham conducted (and supported with the family fortune) the Hallé Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Royal Philharmonic Society; while in addition to conducting and promoting concerts he formed the Beecham Opera Company in 1915.

Plans to stabilise the family finances, which had been badly hit by the war, were thrown into disarray when Beecham’s father died in 1916 on the eve of completing the necessary reconstruction. Beecham himself continued to be active until 1920, notably working with the Grand Opera Syndicate at Covent Garden, but by 1920 he had to withdraw from professional musical life for three years to sort out the Beecham estate. Without the backing of the family fortune Beecham’s activities during the 1920s were less immediately successful. Plans to create an Imperial League of Opera, to bring opera of a high standard to the country, came to nothing.

However his energy was as prodigious as ever. With the advent of electrical recording in 1926 his activities in the studio started to increase, and he conducted extensively abroad. In 1929 he presented a very successful festival of Delius’s music in London, attended by the composer. Following the formation of the permanent BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1930, he determined to form his own full-time orchestra, with the support of the many institutions with which he was connected, notably EMI, which had come into being in 1931 as the result of a merger of the Gramophone and Columbia Companies. This new orchestra was the London Philharmonic Orchestra. With a solid annual programme of work, including opera at Covent Garden, and with Beecham at the helm, it was to set new standards for orchestral performance in the United Kingdom.

The outbreak of World War II drove Beecham and the LPO into difficulties, following the withdrawal of financial support from the orchestra’s wealthy backers. After a tour of Australia he settled in America between 1940 and 1944. He continued to be active as a guest conductor, notably at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and was chief conductor of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra between 1941 and 1943. On returning to England he re-established his connection with the LPO. However its self-governing constitution did not sit well with Beecham’s temperament and desire for the highest standards, so in 1946 he formed yet another orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, once again employing the best instrumentalists and achieving the highest standards. Like the LPO before it, the RPO became extremely active in the recording studio, and with it Beecham made a triumphant tour of the USA in 1950.

The introduction of the long-playing record and later of stereophonic sound allowed Beecham to re-record his core repertoire several times, and provided essential finance for the RPO. During the 1950s Beecham divided his time between conducting the RPO in concerts and on tour, recording with it, and appearing as a guest, mainly in the USA. Towards the end of the decade, as his financial affairs once more became complex, he took up residence in France for taxation reasons. At the end of 1959 he made his last recordings, and during an arduous tour of America began to suffer from a series of mini-strokes which became progressively worse during the remainder of his life, and finally killed him in 1961.

Beecham was indisputably a conductor of the first rank. He surrounded himself with the best musicians he could contract and expected them to give of their best, guided by his own interpretative preferences. The results were frequently unforgettable. He ensured that the orchestral parts from which his musicians played were marked in detail to reflect his interpretation at any one time. Frequently changing, these nuances kept the players alert and reflected Beecham’s mastery of balance. With his mercantile and entrepreneurial background Beecham was a highly astute negotiator, recognising and exploiting opportunities with vigour; and he possessed an exceptional ability to persuade others to support his musical endeavours. He was an ardent maker of gramophone records through which his genius continues to astound. Of his commercial studio recordings, perhaps the most highly praised have been his realisations of Puccini’s opera La Bohème, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade, and his numerous recordings of the music of Mozart, Richard Strauss and Delius.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Patmore (A–Z of Conductors, Naxos 8.558087–90).

Bruno Walter was born into a modest middle-class Jewish family: his father was a book-keeper. Initially, he trained as a pianist, entering the Stern Conservatory in Berlin when he was eight years old, and making his public debut the following year in a student performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. However, after hearing Hans von Bülow conduct in 1889 and visiting the Bayreuth Festival two years later, Walter decided to pursue conducting as a career. As a student he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in 1893 in a setting of Goethe which he had composed himself, and later that year he joined the Cologne Opera as a répétiteur.

It was with this company that Walter made his professional debut as a conductor, in Lortzing’s Der Waffenschmied during 1894, and the following autumn he joined the Hamburg Opera as chorusmaster. Here he worked closely with Gustav Mahler, the company’s chief conductor, who proved to be a major influence upon the young musician, and who secured for him his first conducting post, as first conductor at Breslau in 1896. At the start of the following season Walter moved to the same position in Pressburg (now Bratislava); and after a year there he went to Riga where he stayed for two seasons before taking up a conducting post at the Berlin Court Opera, the leading opera house in Germany at this time. Here Walter’s colleagues included Richard Strauss and Karl Muck; at the end of 1900, he conducted the first performance of Pfitzner’s opera Der arme Heinrich. Mahler invited Walter to join him as a conductor and assistant at the Vienna Court Opera where he was based from 1901 to 1912, composing as well as conducting: the première of his Symphony No. 1 took place in 1909.

Increasingly active as a guest conductor, Walter made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1910 with Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers. Following Mahler’s death in 1911 he conducted the first performances of his Das Lied von der Erde in Munich and of the Symphony No. 9 in Vienna (1912). By now established as one of the most promising conductors in Europe, in 1913 Walter accepted the post of chief conductor at the Court Opera in Munich, where he remained until 1922. Here he conducted the first performances of Korngold’s Violanta and Der Ring des Polykrates (1916) and of Pfitzner’s Palestrina (1917). However during 1921 he became the target of anti-Semitic attacks in the Völkischer Beobachter, and he resigned from his post during the following year.

Walter made his first appearances in America in 1923, conducting in New York, Detroit, Minnesota and Boston, and two years later he made his debut at the Salzburg Festival and was appointed chief conductor at the Berlin Städtische Opera, or Municipal Opera, having been a regular conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic since 1919. During the late 1920s, he continued to enjoy great success as a guest at Covent Garden; first appeared at La Scala, Milan, in 1926, where he came into contact with Toscanini; made a great impression in Paris with a cycle of Mozart operas in 1928; and conducted for the gramophone. He resigned from his Berlin post in 1929 and took up the position of chief conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, succeeding Furtwängler; but with the election of the National Socialist administration in 1933 Walter was immediately prevented from conducting in Leipzig and Berlin. As a consequence he left Germany, making Vienna the centre of operations for his activities until the Anschluss of 1938. Walter conducted several notable productions at the Salzburg Festival, served as artistic director at the Vienna State Opera between 1936 and 1938, and was recorded in concert performances of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (1936) and Symphony No. 9 (1938) with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Although he was offered and accepted French citizenship in 1938, Walter emigrated to America with his family in 1939, settling in Beverly Hills in California.

During the war years Walter was active as a conductor principally in New York, appearing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (later serving as artistic adviser between 1947 and 1949) and with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, leading productions of operas by Beethoven, Mozart and Verdi. He also conducted many major orchestras such as those of Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco, and continued to record, establishing a close relationship with the American Columbia label which lasted until his death. He returned to Europe as a guest conductor after the end of World War II, his appearance at the first Edinburgh Festival in 1947 helping to establish it in the annual musical calendar. During this period Walter forged a close musical relationship with the short-lived English singer Kathleen Ferrier, whom he accompanied at the piano in recital, as well as conducting in unforgettable accounts of Das Lied von der Erde both in concert and on record for Decca. In 1950 Walter made his first appearance in Berlin since 1932, but during the 1950s gradually reduced his commitments, a process which was accelerated by a heart attack in 1957. With the commercial introduction of stereophonic records in 1957, Columbia invited Walter to re-record several major items of his repertoire in California with a hand-picked orchestra, the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, whose personnel was drawn largely from the orchestras of the major Hollywood studios. He made his final appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in 1959, conducting Verdi’s Requiem, and gave his last public concert in Los Angeles in 1960. His final recording sessions took place in March 1961 and he died of a further heart attack in the following year.

Walter was a pre-eminent conductor in a period rich in musicians of stature. He sought to re-create the works which he conducted as if they were receiving their first performance, and this sense of the excitement of fresh discovery can be clearly discerned for instance in his truly historic recording of Act One of Wagner’s Die Walküre, made in 1935 with Lotte Lehmann and Lauritz Melchior with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as in many of his opera performances recorded live from the Salzburg Festival and Metropolitan Opera. He rehearsed orchestras with a seemingly gentle but firm and persuasive manner; in performance he was more concerned with intensity of expression than precise technical exactitude, and always maintained a strong emphasis upon the lyrical qualities of the music which he was interpreting. As his recordings of the Brahms symphonies with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for instance demonstrate, he was able to combine a strong sense of stylistic fidelity with a personal and highly impassioned vision. His close relationship with Mahler gives his recordings of the music of this composer especial authority: his account of the Symphony No. 9, made in concert in Vienna immediately before the Anschluss, possesses extraordinary intensity; while his account of Das Lied von der Erde with Kathleen Ferrier and Julius Patzak accompanied by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra has been recognized as a classic of the gramophone ever since its initial release. Walter’s recorded accounts of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Bruckner exist on a similarly exalted plane, and represent, as does all his music-making, the very finest aspects of the nineteenth-century Austro-German tradion of musical performance.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Patmore (A–Z of Conductors, Naxos 8.558087–90).

Born in Bonn in 1770, the eldest son of a singer in the Kapelle of the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne and grandson of the Archbishop’s Kapellmeister, Beethoven moved in 1792 to Vienna. There he had some lessons from Haydn and others, quickly establishing himself as a remarkable keyboard player and original composer. By 1815 increasing deafness had made public performance impossible and accentuated existing eccentricities of character, patiently tolerated by a series of rich patrons and his royal pupil the Archduke Rudolph. Beethoven did much to enlarge the possibilities of music and widen the horizons of later generations of composers. To his contemporaries he was sometimes a controversial figure, making heavy demands on listeners by both the length and the complexity of his writing, as he explored new fields of music.

Stage Works

Although he contemplated others, Beethoven wrote only one opera. This was eventually called Fidelio after the name assumed by the heroine Leonora, who disguises herself as a boy and takes employment at the prison in which her husband has been unjustly incarcerated. This escape opera, for which there was precedent in contemporary France, ends with the defeat of the evil prison governor and the rescue of Florestan, testimony to the love and constancy of his wife Leonora. The work was first staged in 1805 and mounted again in a revised performance in 1814, under more favourable circumstances. The ballet The Creatures of Prometheus was staged in Vienna in 1801, and Beethoven wrote incidental music for various other dramatic productions, including Goethe’s Egmont, von Kotzebue’s curious The Ruins of Athens, and the same writer’s King Stephen.

Choral and Vocal Music

Beethoven’s most impressive choral work is the Missa solemnis, written for the enthronement of his pupil Archduke Rudolph as Archbishop of Olmütz (Olomouc) although finished too late for that occasion. An earlier work, the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, is less well known. In common with other composers, Beethoven wrote a number of songs. Of these the best known are probably the settings of Goethe, which did little to impress the venerable poet and writer (he ignored their existence), and the cycle of six songs known as An die ferne Geliebte (‘To the Distant Beloved’). The song ‘Adelaide’is challenging but not infrequently heard.

Orchestral Music

Symphonies

Beethoven completed nine symphonies, works that influenced the whole future of music by the expansion of the traditional Classical form. The best known are Symphony No. 3, ‘Eroica’, originally intended to celebrate the initially republican achievements of Napoleon; No. 5; No. 6, ‘Pastoral’; and No. 9, ‘Choral’. The less satisfactory ‘Battle Symphony’ celebrates the earlier military victories of the Duke of Wellington.

Overtures

For the theatre and various other occasions Beethoven wrote a number of overtures, including four for his only opera, Fidelio (one under that name and the others under the name of the heroine, Leonora). Other overtures include Egmont, Coriolan, Prometheus, The Consecration of the House and The Ruins of Athens.

Concertos

Beethoven completed one violin concerto and five piano concertos, as well as a triple concerto for violin, cello and piano, and the curious Choral Fantasy for solo piano, chorus and orchestra. The piano concertos were for the composer’s own use in concert performance. No. 5, the so-called ‘Emperor’ Concerto, is possibly the most impressive. The single Violin Concerto, also arranged for piano, is part of the standard violin repertoire along with two romances (possible slow movements for an unwritten violin concerto).

Chamber Music

Beethoven wrote 10 sonatas for violin and piano, of which the ‘Spring’ and the ‘Kreutzer’ are particular favourites with audiences. He extended very considerably the possibilities of the string quartet. This is shown even in his first set of quartets, Op. 18, but it is possibly the group of three dedicated to Prince Razumovsky (the ‘Razumovsky’ Quartets, Op. 59) that are best known. The later string quartets offer great challenges to both players and audience, and include the remarkable Grosse Fuge—a gigantic work, discarded as the final movement of the String Quartet, Op. 130, and published separately. Other chamber music includes a number of trios for violin, cello and piano, with the ‘Archduke’ Trio pre-eminent and the ‘Ghost’ Trio a close runner-up, for very different reasons. The cello sonatas and sets of variations for cello and piano (including one set based on Handel’s ‘See, the conqu’ring hero comes’ from Judas Maccabaeus and others on operatic themes from Mozart) are a valuable part of any cellist’s repertoire. Chamber music with wind instruments and piano include the Quintet, Op. 16, for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon. Among other music for wind instruments is the very popular Septet, scored for clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello and double bass, as well as a trio for two oboes and cor anglais, and a set of variations on a theme from Mozart’s Don Giovanni for the same instruments.

Piano Music

Beethoven’s 32 numbered piano sonatas make full use of the developing form of the piano, with its wider range and possibilities of dynamic contrast. Other sonatas not included in the 32 published by Beethoven are earlier works, dating from his years in Bonn. There are also interesting sets of variations, including a set based on ‘God Save the King’and another on ‘Rule, Britannia’, variations on a theme from the ‘Eroica’ Symphony, and a major work based on a relatively trivial theme by the publisher Diabelli. The best known of the sonatas are those that have earned themselves affectionate nicknames: the ‘Pathétique’, ‘Moonlight’, ‘Waldstein’, ‘Appassionata’, ‘Les Adieux’ and ‘Hammerklavier’. Less substantial piano pieces include three sets of bagatelles, the all too well-known Für Elise, and the Rondo a capriccio, known in English as ‘Rage Over a Lost Penny’.

Dance Music

Famous composers like Haydn and Mozart were also employed in the practical business of providing dance music for court and social occasions. Beethoven wrote a number of sets of minuets, German dances and contredanses, ending with the so-called Mödlinger Dances, written for performers at a neighbouring inn during a summer holiday outside Vienna.

The youngest child and only surviving son of Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus was born in Salzburg in 1756, the publication year of his father’s influential treatise on violin playing. He showed early precocity both as a keyboard player and violinist, and soon turned his hand to composition. His obvious gifts were developed, along with those of his elder sister, under his father’s tutelage, and the family, through the indulgence of their then patron, the Archbishop of Salzburg, was able to travel abroad—specifically between 1763 and 1766, to Paris and to London. A series of other journeys followed, with important operatic commissions in Italy between 1771 and 1773. The following period proved disappointing to both father and son as the young Mozart grew to manhood and was irked by the lack of opportunity and lack of appreciation for his gifts in Salzburg, where a new archbishop was less sympathetic. A visit to Munich, Mannheim and Paris in 1777 and 1778 brought no substantial offer of other employment and by early 1779 Mozart was reinstated in Salzburg, now as court organist. Early in 1781 he had a commissioned opera, Idomeneo, staged in Munich for the Elector of Bavaria, and dissatisfaction after being summoned to attend his patron the Archbishop in Vienna led to his dismissal. Mozart spent the last 10 years of his life in precarious independence in Vienna, his material situation not improved by a marriage imprudent for one in his circumstances. Initial success with German and then Italian opera and a series of subscription concerts were followed by financial difficulties. In 1791 things seemed to have taken a turn for the better, despite a lack of interest from the successor to the Emperor Joseph II, who had died in 1790. In late November, however, Mozart became seriously ill and died in the small hours of 5 December. Mozart’s compositions were catalogued in the 19th century by Köchel, and they are now generally distinguished by the K. numbering from this catalogue.

Operas

Mozart was essentially an operatic composer, although Salzburg offered him no real opportunity to exercise his talents in this direction. The greater stage works belong to the last decade of his life, starting with Idomeneo in Munich in January 1781. In Vienna, where he then settled, his first success came with the German opera or Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail (‘The Abduction from the Seraglio’), a work on a Turkish theme, staged at the Burgtheater in 1782. Le nozze di Figaro (‘The Marriage of Figaro’), an Italian comic opera with a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte based on the controversial play by Beaumarchais, was staged at the same theatre in 1786, followed by Don Giovanni, with a libretto again by Da Ponte, in Prague in 1787. Così fan tutte (‘All Women Behave Alike’) was staged briefly in Vienna in 1790, its run curtailed by the death of the Emperor. La clemenza di Tito (‘The Clemency of Titus’) was written for the coronation of the new Emperor in Prague in 1791, no such commission having been granted Mozart in Vienna. His last stage work in order of performance, a Singspiel, was Die Zauberflöte (‘The Magic Flute’), mounted at the end of September at the Theater auf der Wieden, a magic opera that was running with success at the time of the composer’s death.

Church Music

As he lay dying, Mozart was joined by his friends to sing through parts of a work that he left unfinished. This was his setting of the Requiem Mass, commissioned by an anonymous nobleman who had intended to pass off the work as his own. The Requiem was later completed by Mozart’s pupil Süssmayr, to whom it was eventually entrusted, although other possible completions of the work have since been proposed. Mozart composed other church music, primarily for use in Salzburg. Settings of the Mass include the ‘Coronation’ Mass of 1779, one of a number of liturgical settings of this kind. In addition to settings of litanies and Vespers, Mozart wrote a number of shorter works for church use. These include the well-known Exsultate, jubilate written for the castrato Rauzzini in Milan in 1773 and the simple four-part setting of the Ave verum, written to oblige a priest in Baden in June 1791. Mozart’s Church or Epistle Sonatas were written to bridge the liturgical gap between the singing of the Epistle and the singing of the Gospel at Mass. Composed in Salzburg during a period from 1772 until 1780, the sonatas are generally scored for two violins, bass instrument and organ, although three of them, intended for days of greater ceremony, involve a slightly larger ensemble.

Vocal and Choral Music

In addition to a smaller number of works for vocal ensemble, Mozart wrote concert arias and scenes, some of them for insertion into operas by others. Songs, with piano accompaniment, include a setting of Goethe’s ‘Das Veilchen’(‘The Violet’).

Orchestral Music

Symphonies

Mozart wrote his first symphony in London in 1764–5 and his last in Vienna in August 1788. The last three symphonies, Nos. 39, 40 and 41, were all written during the summer of 1788, each with its own highly individual character. No. 39, in E flat major, using clarinets instead of the usual pair of oboes, has a timbre all its own, while No. 40 in G minor, with its ominous and dramatic opening, is now very familiar. The last symphony, nicknamed in later years the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, has a fugal last movement, a contrapuntal development of what was becoming standard symphonic practice. All the symphonies, of course, repay listening. Of particular beauty are Symphony No. 29, scored for the then usual pairs of oboes and French horns with strings, written in 1774; the more grandiose ‘Paris’ Symphony, No. 31, written in 1778 with a French audience in mind; and the ‘Haffner’, the ‘Linz’ and the ‘Prague’, Nos. 35, 36 and 38. The so-called ‘Salzburg’ symphonies, scored only for strings and in three movements, on the Italian model, were probably intended for occasional use during one of Mozart’s Italian journeys. They are more generally known in English as Divertimenti, K. 136, 137 and 138. The symphonies are not numbered absolutely in chronological order of composition, but Nos. 35 to 41 were written in Vienna in the 1780s and Nos. 14 to 30 in Salzburg in the 1770s.

Cassations, Divertimenti and Serenades

The best-known serenade of all is Eine kleine Nachtmusik (‘A Little Night Music’), a charming piece of which four of the five original movements survive. It is scored for solo strings and was written in the summer of 1787, the year of the opera Don Giovanni and of the death of the composer’s father. The Serenata notturna, written in 1776 in Salzburg, uses solo and orchestral strings and timpani, while the Divertimento, K. 247, ‘Lodron Night Music’, dating from the same year, also served a social purpose during evening entertainments in Salzburg. Cassations, the word more or less synonymous with divertimento or serenade, again had occasional use—sometimes as street serenades, as in the case of Mozart’s three surviving works of this title, which were designed to mark end-of-year university celebrations. Generally music of this kind consisted of several short movements. Other examples of the form by Mozart include the so-called ‘Posthorn’ Serenade, K. 320, which uses the posthorn itself during its course, and the ‘Haffner’ Serenade, designed to celebrate an event in the Haffner family in Salzburg. The Serenade, K. 361, known as the ‘Gran Partita’, was written during the composer’s first years of independence in Vienna and scored for a dozen wind instruments and a double bass.

Dance Music

Mozart wrote a great deal of dance music both in Salzburg and in Vienna. His only court appointment under Emperor Joseph II was as a composer of court dance music, a position that, in his words, paid him too much for what he did and not enough for what he could have done. The dance music includes German dances, Ländler and contredanses—popular forms of the time.

Concertos

Mozart wrote some 30 keyboard concertos. The earliest of these are four arrangements of movements by various composers, made in 1767. In 1772 he arranged three sonatas by the youngest son of J.S. Bach, Johann Christian, although these three works are not generally included in the numbering of the concertos. Apart from these arrangements he wrote six keyboard concertos during his years in Salzburg. The more important compositions in this form, designed clearly for the fortepiano (an instrument smaller than the modern pianoforte and with a more delicately incisive tone), were written in Vienna between 1782 and 1791. They were principally for the composer’s use in subscription concerts with which he at first won success in the imperial capital. Of the 27 numbered concertos, particular mention may be made of No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, and No. 24 in C minor, K. 491. He completed his last piano concerto—No. 27, K. 595 in B flat major—in January 1791.

Mozart wrote a series of five concertos for solo violin, one in 1773 and four in 1775, at a time when he was concertmaster of the court orchestra in Salzburg. Of the last four, K. 216 in G major, K. 218 in D major and K. 219 in A major are the best known, together with the splendid Sinfonia concertante of 1779 for solo violin and solo viola. The Concertone for two solo violins, written in 1774, is less frequently heard.

Mozart’s concertos for solo wind instruments include one for bassoon, two for flute, one for oboe, and one for clarinet—his final concerto, written in October 1791. He wrote four concertos for French horn, principally for the use of his friend, the horn player Ignaz Leutgeb, and a Sinfonia concertante for solo wind instruments, designed for performance by Mannheim friends in Paris. During his stay in France in 1778 he also wrote a fine concerto for flute and harp, intended for unappreciative aristocratic patrons there.

Chamber Music

It was inevitable that Mozart should also show his mastery in music for smaller groups of instruments. With some reluctance he accepted a commission in Mannheim for a series of quartets for flute and string trio, two of which he completed during his stay there in 1777–8. A third flute quartet was completed in Vienna in 1787, preceded by an oboe quartet in Munich in 1781; a quintet the following year for French horn, violin, two violas and cello; and finally, in 1789, a clarinet quintet. The wind part of this last work was for Mozart’s friend Anton Stadler, a virtuoso performer on the newly developed clarinet and on the basset-clarinet, an instrument of extended range and of his own invention.

Mozart’s work for string instruments includes a group of string quintets written in Vienna in 1787, and, over the course of around 20 years, some 23 string quartets. Particularly interesting are the later quartets, a group of six dedicated to and influenced by Joseph Haydn, and three final quartets, the so-called ‘Prussian’ Quartets, intended for the cello-playing King of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm II. Ein musikalische Spass (‘A Musical Joke’), K. 522, for two horns and solo strings, was written in 1787; the music is a recreation of a work played for and presumably composed by village musicians, including formal solecisms and other deliberate mistakes of structure and harmony.

There are other chamber-music compositions, principally written during the last 10 years of Mozart’s life in Vienna and involving the use of the piano, an instrument on which Mozart excelled. These later compositions include six completed piano trios, two piano quartets, and a work that Mozart himself considered his best: a quintet for piano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn, K. 452.

Mozart added considerably to the repertoire of sonatas for violin and piano, writing his first between the ages of six and eight, and his last in 1788, making up a total of some 30 compositions. On the whole, the later sonatas intended for professional players of a high order have more to offer than the sonatas written for pupils or amateurs, although there is fine music, for example, in the set of six sonatas written during the composer’s journey to Mannheim and Paris in 1777 and 1778.

Piano Music

Mozart’s sonatas for the fortepiano cover a period from 1766 to 1791, with a significant number of mature sonatas written during the years in Vienna. The sonatas include much fine music, ranging from the slighter C major Sonata for beginners, K. 545, to the superb and more technically challenging B flat Sonata, K. 570. In addition to his sonatas he wrote a number of sets of variations, while his ephemeral improvisations in similar form are inevitably lost to us. The published works include operatic variations as well as a set of variations on the theme Ah, vous dirai-je, maman, known in English as ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’.

Organ Music

There is very little organ music by Mozart or, indeed, by other great composers of the period, although organ improvisation was an art generally practised, then as now. Mozart’s organ music includes a few compositions for mechanical organ, one improvisation (transcribed from memory by a priest who heard most of it), and a number of smaller compositions perhaps intended for organ but written in childhood. Mozart’s last appointment in Salzburg was as court organist, and there are significant organ parts in some of the church sonatas he wrote during that brief period, in 1779 and 1780.