Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
On this page, you can learn about Mozart and view videos with his very best music.
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Quotes about Mozart
Mozart is the greatest composer of all. Beethoven created his music, but the music of Mozart is of such purity and beauty that one feels he merely found it – that it has always existed as part of the inner beauty of the universe waiting to be revealed.
(Albert Einstein)
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Mozart is the highest, the culminating point that beauty has attained in the sphere of music.
(Tchaikovsky)
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A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.
(Goethe)
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Mozart is happiness before it has gotten defined.
(Arthur Miller)
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Mozart is the musical Christ.
(Tchaikovsky)
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Mozart’s music always sounds unburdened, effortless, and light. This is why it unburdens, releases, and liberates us.
(Karl Barth)
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Mozart’s music is so beautiful as to entice angels down to earth.
(Franz Alexander von Kleist)
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Listening to Mozart, we cannot think of any possible improvement.
(George Szell)
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Does it not seem as if Mozart’s works become fresher and fresher the oftener we hear them?
(Robert Schumann)
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If we cannot write with the beauty of Mozart, let us at least try to write with his purity.
(Johannes Brahms)
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The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries, and in all the arts.
(Richard Wagner)
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Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with spontaneity and refinement, and breathtaking rightness.
(Aaron Copland)
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Mozart shows a creative power of such magnitude that one can virtually say that he tossed out of himself one great masterpiece after another.
(Claudio Arrau)
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In Mozart’s music, all intensity is crystallized in the clearest, the most beautifully balanced and proportioned, and altogether flawless musical forms.
(Phil Goulding)
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Mozart, prodigal heaven gave thee everything, grace, and strength, abundance and moderation, perfect equilibrium.
(Charles Gounod)
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It is a real pleasure to see music so bright and spontaneous expressed with corresponding ease and grace.
(Brahms)
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What a picture of a better world you have given us, Mozart!
(Franz Schubert)
Biography
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was the most prolific and influential composer of the Classical era.
Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death.
In his lifespan of only 35 years he composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular classical composers, and his influence on subsequent Western art music is profound; Ludwig van Beethoven composed his own early works in the shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn wrote that “posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was not only one of the greatest composers of the Classical period but one of the greatest of all time. Surprisingly, he is not identified with radical formal or harmonic innovations, or with the profound kind of symbolism heard in some of Bach’s works. Mozart’s best music has a natural flow and irresistible charm and can express humor, joy, or sorrow with both conviction and mastery. His operas, especially his later works, are brilliant examples of high art, as are many of his piano concertos and later symphonies. Even his lesser compositions and juvenile works feature much attractive and often masterful music.
Mozart was the last of seven children, of whom five did not survive early childhood. By the age of three, he was playing the clavichord, and at four he began writing short compositions. Young Wolfgang gave his first public performance at the age of five at Salzburg University, and in January 1762, he performed on harpsichord for the Elector of Bavaria. There are many astonishing accounts of the young Mozart’s precocity and genius. At the age of seven, for instance, he picked up a violin at a musical gathering and sight-read the second part of a work with complete accuracy, despite his never having had a violin lesson.
In the years 1763 – 1766, Mozart, along with his father Leopold, a composer and musician, and sister Nannerl, also a musically talented child, toured London, Paris, and other parts of Europe, giving many successful concerts and performing before royalty. The Mozart family returned to Salzburg in November 1766. The following year young Wolfgang composed his first opera, Apollo et Hyacinthus. Keyboard concertos and other major works were also coming from his pen now.
In 1769, Mozart was appointed Konzertmeister at the Salzburg Court by the Archbishop. Beginning that same year, the Mozarts made three tours of Italy, where the young composer studied Italian opera and produced two successful works, Mitridate and Lucio Silla. In 1773, Mozart was back in Austria, where he spent most of the next few years composing. He wrote all his violin concertos between 1774 and 1777, as well as Masses, symphonies, and chamber works.
In 1780, Mozart wrote his opera Idomeneo, which became a sensation in Munich. After a conflict with the Archbishop, Mozart left his Konzertmeister post and settled in Vienna. He received a number of commissions now and took on a well-paying but unimportant Court post. In 1782 Mozart married Constanze Weber and took her to Salzburg the following year to introduce her to his family. 1782 was also the year that saw his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail staged with great success.
In 1784, Mozart joined the Freemasons, apparently embracing the teachings of that group. He would later write music for certain Masonic lodges. In the early- and mid-1780s, Mozart composed many sonatas and quartets, and often appeared as a soloist in the fifteen piano concertos he wrote during this period. Many of his commissions were for operas now, and Mozart met them with a string of masterpieces. Le nozze di Figaro came 1786, Don Giovanni in 1787, Così fan tutte in 1790 and Die Zauberflöte in 1791. Mozart made a number of trips in his last years, and while his health had been fragile in previous times, he displayed no serious condition or illness until he developed a fever of unknown origin near the end of 1791.
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Symphony No. 36 in C major, K. 425
This symphony – also known as the Linz Symphony – was written during a stopover in the Austrian town of Linz on Mozart’s and his wife’s way back home to Vienna from Salzburg in late 1783.
The entire symphony was written in four days to accommodate the local count’s announcement, upon hearing of the Mozarts’ arrival in Linz, of a concert.
However, the symphony shows no signs of haste. It is especially concisely worked out. The première in Linz took place on 4 November 1783.
There are 4 movements:
Adagio — Allegro spiritoso
Andante
Menuetto
Finale (Presto)
The video shows a performance by the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Julian Rachlin.
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-Kristiansand symphony orchestra
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Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504
This symphony was composed in late 1786. It was premiered in Prague on January 19, 1787, during Mozart’s first visit to the city. Because it was first performed in Prague, it is popularly known as the Prague Symphony. Mozart’s autograph thematic catalog records December 6, 1786, as the date of completion for this composition.
The lavish use of wind instruments might offer a clue that the Prague Symphony was fashioned specifically with the Prague public in mind. The wind players of Bohemia were famed throughout Europe.
The work has the following three movements, all three of which are in sonata form.
1. Adagio—Allegro, 4/4
2. Andante in G major, 6/8
3. Finale (Presto), 2/4
In the video, the symphony is performed by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Bernard Haitink at the BBC Proms 2017.
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Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major, K. 543
This symphony was completed on 26 June 1788. It is the first of Mozart’s three last symphonies composed in rapid succession during the summer of 1788. No. 40 was completed on 25 July and No. 41 on 10 August. Perhaps Mozart composed the three symphonies as a final unified work.
There are four movements:
Adagio – Allegro
Andante con moto
Menuetto: Trio
Allegro
In the video, the symphony is performed by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk.
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Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550
This symphony was completed on 25 July 1788. It is sometimes referred to as the “Great G minor symphony”, to distinguish it from the “Little G minor symphony”, No. 25. The two are the only extant minor key symphonies Mozart wrote.
The symphony was composed in just a few weeks and it is one of Mozart’s most greatly admired works.
The work is in four movements
Molto allegro
Andante
Menuetto, allegretto
Finale, allegro assai
In the video, the symphony is performed by Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein.
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Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551
This symphony was completed on 10 August 1788. It was the last symphony that Mozart composed, and also the longest.
The work is nicknamed the Jupiter Symphony. This name stems not from Mozart but rather was likely coined by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon in an early arrangement for piano.
It is regarded by many critics as among the greatest symphonies in classical music.
The four movements are arranged in the traditional symphonic form:
Allegro vivace
Andante cantabile
Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio
Molto allegro
In the video, the symphony is performed by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paavo Järvi.
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Violin Concerto No. 1 in B-flat major K. 207
This was originally supposed to have been composed in 1775 (when Mozart was 19), along with the other four wholly authentic violin concertos.
However, analysis of handwriting and the manuscript paper on which the concerto was written suggests that the actual date of composition might have been 1773. It has the usual fast-slow-fast structure.
Movements are:
Allegro moderato
Adagio
Presto
In the video, the concerto is performed by violinist Claire Bourg with The New England Conservatory Chamber Orchestra. It was recorded live in Jordan Hall, Boston.
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Violin Concerto No. 2 in D major K. 211
This concerto which was composed in 1775 radiates a distinctly galant atmosphere reminiscent of the French style of violin playing.
Dazzling and elegant, it gives the soloist luminous passages such as the minor-key melody in the first movement and the main melody of the Andante.
The concluding Rondo again recalls the brilliance of the French style.
There are three movements:
1 | 0:20 Allegro moderato
2 | 8:39 Andante
3 | 15:38 Rondeau: Allegro
In the video, the concerto is performed by Julia Fischer (violin/director) and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. This is a superb performance from February 2022 at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London.
Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 216
This was composed in Salzburg in 1775 when Mozart was only 19 years old.
Here Mozart began allocating a more demanding role to the orchestra, striving for the effect of a dialogue between soloist and accompaniment.
Without leaving the French-influenced style behind completely, he began to find his own voice in this piece, elaborating it with a breadth and detail that had previously been lacking.
It has three movements:
0:09 I Allegro
9:26 II Adagio
16:56 III Rondeau. Allegro
In the video, a wonderful performance of the concert is made by the violinist virtuoso Hilary Hahn with the Camarata Salzburg conducted by Louis Langree. The cadenzas are by Hilary Hahn.
Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major, K. 218
This concerto was composed in 1775 in Salzburg.
This concerto remains the most immediately scintillating of the five — when asked to bring a Mozart concerto to the audition room, this is the one that is selected most often by aspiring violinists.
There are three movements:
1 Allegro
2 Andante cantabile
3 Rondeau. Andante grazioso – Allegro ma non troppo
In the video, the concerto is performed by violinist Noa Wildschut and the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra. As an encore, Noa plays the third movement from Bach’s ‘Violin Sonata No.2 in A minor, BWV 1003’.
Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219
This concerto is often referred to as the Turkish. It was written in 1775, premiering during the holiday season that year in Salzburg. This is the most refined and accomplished of Mozart’s early works for this instrument.
It explores all the resources of the violin and integrates the orchestra much more thoroughly and organically into the concerto structure than in the previous works. The last movement is beloved above all for its minor-mode “Turkish” episode.
It follows the typical fast-slow-fast musical structure:
Allegro Aperto – Adagio – Allegro Aperto
Adagio
Rondeau – Tempo di Minuetto
In the video, the concerto is performed by Bomsori Kim with Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie conducted by Paul Meyer.
Piano Concerto No. 14 in E-flat major K. 449
This was finished on February 9 1784. This concerto is regarded as being the first of the mature series of concertos. Some commentators valued it as one of the best, particularly as all three movements are of the highest standard.
Mozart wrote 23 original concertos for piano and orchestra. These works, many of which Mozart composed for himself to play in the Vienna concert series of 1784–86, held special importance for him. They are now recognised as among his greatest achievements.
This concerto has three movements:
Allegro vivace
Andantino
Allegro ma non troppo
In the video, the concerto is performed by Murray Perahia and the English Chamber Orchestra.
Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat major, KV. 456
The 28-year-old Mozart composed six piano concertos in 1784, intending himself as the soloist for most of them. This Concerto (the “Paradis” Concerto) – completed on September 30 – was written for Maria Theresia von Paradis, an accomplished singer, pianist, and composer who had gone blind at the age of four.
The theme of the first movement, introduced by the strings, begins with a quiet, crisp fanfare. The wind instruments echo the melody at the same volume, and then the sections join forces for a confident completion of the theme before the piano is introduced.
The second movement consists of a theme and five variations, followed by a coda.
The finale has a rondo form, with a charming theme recurring throughout the movement. One of the contrasting passages features a temporary metric conflict: the strings remain in 6/8 throughout the movement, but near the midpoint the woodwinds switch to 2/4. The piano briefly reinforces the winds in 2/4 before coaxing them back to 6/8 for the sunny conclusion.
The movements are:
Allegro vivace
Andante in G minor
Allegro vivace
In the video, the concerto is performed by the legendary pianist Sviatoslav Richter, and Japan Shinsei Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rudolf Barshai.
Piano Concerto No. 19 in F major, KV 459
This concerto was finished 11 December 1784. It is occasionally known as the “second coronation concerto” on account of Mozart playing it on the occasion of the coronation of Leopold II in Frankfurt am Main in October 1790.
The greater richness of the orchestral parts, the orchestra’s independence from the soloist, and the chamber-like qualities of the score – all of these mark the F-major Concerto as a significant moment in Mozart’s output. It combines grace with vigour.
The greater richness of the orchestral parts, the orchestra’s independence from the soloist, and the chamber-like qualities of the score – all of these mark the F-major Concerto as a significant moment in Mozart’s output.
There are three movements:
Allegro
Allegretto
Allegro assai
In the video, the concerto is performed by Maurizio Pollini and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karl Böhm.
Here is another fine video showing a performance of the concerto by Radu Lupu and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie conducted by David Zinman.
In this video, the concerto is performed by Benedek Horváth and Musikkolegium Winterthur conducted by Theodor Guschlbauer.
Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466
This was written in 1785 and first performed by Mozart at the Mehlgrube Casino in Vienna on February 11, 1785. Mozart had just completed this work the day before.
Today, rather than standing in near-solitary splendor alongside Mozart’s only other minor-key piano concerto, it is regarded as the first in the succession of the half-dozen sublime masterpieces for piano and orchestra dating from 1785-1786.
The composer-pianist was at the time still the idol of Viennese society, his audiences willing to accept anything that flew from his pen, even so uncharacteristic a score as the Concerto in D minor – if Mozart were also the performer.
The success of the Concerto was considerable, based in no small part on the composer’s playing of the demanding solo, the entire presentation made additionally exigent by the fact that the ink was still wet on some of the orchestral parts until an hour before the performance.
The movements are:
Allegro
Romanze
Allegro assai
In the video, the concerto is performed by Rudolf Buchbinder and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Here is another video showing a performance by Yulia Miloslavskaya and the PreCollege Orchestra in Zürich.
Finally, this video shows a performance by Valentina Lisitsa and the Freiburger Mozart-Orchester conducted by Michael Erren.
Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467
Mozart was lucky enough to write pretty much all his piano concertos to play himself. Indeed, the economics of his freelance, almost at times itinerant life as a composer and performer meant he was not just lucky to play them, but financially compelled to do so.
When he had finished writing the piece, an unprecedented busy and successful time followed for Mozart. He premiered the concerto himself at a benefit concert in the National Court Theatre at which he also, according to the adverts, did some of his famous improvisations.
So great was Mozart’s memory for music, that he was said to be able to store at least two complete new symphonies in his head before he needed to write them down.
It was completed on March 9, 1785. Its wide recognition is in large part due to the Swedish film Elvira Madigan (1967), in which its lyrical second movement was featured and from which it derives its byname.
Mozart completed his Concerto No. 21 only a month after his previous concerto. He would write four more in the next 21 months.
Because Mozart wrote them for his own concert performances in Vienna, he did not write down the solo cadenzas that he improvised during performance, and, as a result, modern concert pianists have had to either create their own cadenzas or use those created by others.
Piano Concerto No. 21 is among the most technically demanding of all Mozart’s concerti. The composer’s own father, Leopold Mozart, described it as “astonishingly difficult.”
The difficulty lies less in the intricacy of the notes on the page than in playing those many notes smoothly and elegantly. Mozart made the challenge look easy, as newspapers of his time attest, though his letters reveal the hard work behind those performances.
The piece’s first movement is an exuberant, extroverted lead-in to an internal, quietly satisfying second movement. The third movement reveals Mozart at his high-spirited, irrepressible best.
The three movements are:
Allegro maestoso
Andante
Allegro vivace assai
Here is a video with the concert being performed by Maurizio Pollini and the Orchestra filarmonica della Scala conducted by Riccardo Muti.
This video shows a very fine performance by Murray Perahia with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
Finally, this video presents a performance by Andrew Tyson with L’Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie conducted by Michael Hofstetter.
Piano Concerto No. 22 in E flat major, K. 482
Mozart completed the Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat major on December 16, 1785 as he was approaching the height of his popularity in Vienna.
Almost simultaneously, he had been working on the score to The Marriage of Figaro.
The following spring, the opera would prove so popular that Emperor Joseph had to limit encores of individual numbers during performances.
Though opera was the most prestigious genre of music, piano concertos formed the bread and butter of Mozart’s career at the time, and his performances of his own works were in high demand.
Michael Kelly, an Irish tenor who originated the roles of Basilio and Don Curzio in The Marriage of Figaro, left a vivid description of Mozart’s piano technique from this time: “His feeling, the rapidity of his fingers, the great execution and strength of his left hand particularly, and the apparent inspiration of his modulations, astounded me.”
As far as we know, Mozart likely performed this particular concerto at least three times during his life: twice within a few weeks of its completion and again during a series of subscription concerts the following Lent.
Apart from Mozart’s usual formal perfection and melodic genius, this concerto is especially noteworthy for its colorful woodwind writing, which employs clarinets in place of the oboes expected in an orchestra of this era.
the movements are:
Allegro
Andante
Allegro
In the video, the concerto is performed by the pianist Rudolf Buchbinder who also conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major (K. 488)
This work dates from early 1786, when Mozart was in demand chiefly as a composer of vocal music – Le Nozze di Figaro was taking shape at the same time.
But the fickle Viennese public, which had three years earlier so lavishly acclaimed the piano concertos by the young virtuoso from Salzburg, was hardly clamoring for more.
Mozart nevertheless went ahead with the composition, in the belief that he could seduce the public with his unquenchable ability to come up with something new and tantalizing.
The Concerto is a lithe and gracious work in the key of A major, which it shares with the equally mellow Clarinet Concerto, his last instrumental composition. It was intended for Mozart’s own performance and remained unpublished at his death.
The Concerto replaces the bright-toned oboes usually found in Mozart’s concertos with clarinets, for darker coloration, particularly in the passionate, richly chromatic slow movement in the rare key of F-sharp minor. But there are no trumpets and drums.
The atmosphere remains intimate, with interchanges between the woodwinds – flute, clarinets, bassoons – heightening the chamber-music feeling of the first two movements; and while the rondo-finale may be a smiling affair, it hardly lacks those passing touches of pathos without which Mozart simply wouldn’t be Mozart.
The Concerto has all the characteristics of the work of a wise old master, giving the impression of having seen and heard everything and having no regrets. And in a sense Mozart was old, at the age of 30.
The movements are:
Allegro
Adagio
Allegro assai – Rondo
In the video, the concerto is performed by Maurizio Pollini, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karl Böhm.
Here is a fine video of a performance in the Royal Albert Hall by Eric Lu with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra conducted by Long Yu.
Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491
Mozart finished the concerto on 24 March 1786, three weeks after completing his Piano Concerto No. 23.
The work is one of only two minor-key piano concertos that Mozart composed, the other being the No. 20 in D minor.
None of Mozart’s other piano concertos features a larger array of instruments: the work is scored for strings, woodwinds, horns, trumpets and timpani.
The first of its three movements, Allegro, is in sonata form and is longer than any opening movement of Mozart’s earlier concertos.
The second movement, Larghetto, in E♭ major—the relative major of C minor—features a strikingly simple principal theme.
The final movement, Allegretto, is a theme and eight variations in C minor.
The work is one of Mozart’s most advanced compositions in the concerto genre.
The orchestral parts in the original score are written in a clear manner. The solo part, on the other hand, is often incomplete: on many occasions in the score Mozart notated only the outer parts of passages of scales or broken chords. This suggests that Mozart improvised much of the solo part when performing the work.
The premiere of the concerto was on either 3 or 7 April 1786 at the Burgtheater in Vienna; Mozart featured as the soloist and conducted the orchestra from the keyboard.
Ludwig van Beethoven admired the concerto and it may have influenced his Piano Concerto No. 3, also in C minor. After hearing the work in a rehearsal, Beethoven reportedly remarked to a colleague that “we shall never be able to do anything like that.”
Johannes Brahms also admired the concerto, encouraging Clara Schumann to play it, and wrote his own cadenza for the first movement. Brahms referred to the work as a “masterpiece of art and full of inspired ideas.
Musicologist Arthur Hutchings declared it to be, taken as a whole, Mozart’s greatest piano concerto.
The concerto has the following three movements:
Allegro in
Larghetto
Allegretto (Variations)
In the video, the concerto is performed by Rudolf Buchbinder and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503
This concerto was completed on December 4, 1786, alongside the Prague Symphony, K. 504. Although two more concertos (K. 537 and K. 595) would later follow, this work is the last of the twelve great piano concertos written in Vienna between 1784 and 1786.
Though the orchestra lacks clarinets, it does include trumpets and timpani. The concerto is one of Mozart’s longest, with a duration of about 33 minutes.
Balancing beauty and nobility of utterance with the emotional range of expressive melodic contours that speak volumes without the need for the specifics of any text, these scores provide us with an unparalleled opportunity to experience the miracle of Mozart, especially when directed from the keyboard as in this concerto.
Among his piano concertos, No. 25 (the last of three such works in the key of C major) ranks high on the list for its sublime integration of the composer’s manifold gifts.
The opening is marked maestoso, but numerous other qualities beyond mere majesty are soon apparent.
The swings to the minor mode bring twinges of uncertainty and hesitation to the otherwise heroic scenario being depicted, albeit wordlessly.
Ample use of the wind instruments reminds us of Mozart’s amazing gift for orchestration, not just in the mercurial opening movement, but throughout the concerto. Mozart left us no cadenza for the first movement, which allows soloists to choose one by another performer, or to prepare and perform their own.
Contrast is an essential element in Mozart’s arsenal, and the second movement of this concerto provides ample demonstration of this. After the discursive and extended opening movement, the lyrical centerpiece of the concerto remains aloof and eloquent, an oasis of calm reflection in which the extreme registers of the piano are explored and exploited.
Echoing standard practice in opening movements, Mozart begins the finale with a full statement of themes by the orchestra. As usual in Mozart’s concerto finales, the ensuing scenario is disrupted by surprises along the way. Mozart supplies plenty of pomp to round off the work’s grand opening pages.
In 1798, music critic Johann Friedrich Rochlitz described the concerto as “the most magnificent and difficult of all Mozart’s hitherto known concertos” and ” the most magnificent of all the concertos which have ever been written.”
K. 503 is now widely recognized as “one of Mozart’s greatest masterpieces in the concerto genre.” Though Mozart performed it on several occasions, it was not performed again in Vienna until after his death, and it only gained acceptance in the standard repertoire in the later part of the twentieth century.
It is often viewed as a “kindred spirit” or “the rival and the complement” of Mozart’s great C minor piano concerto, K. 491, completed a few months prior.
The movements are:
Allegro maestoso
Andante
Allegretto
In the video, the concerto is performed by pianist Rudolf Buchbinder and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
This video presents a performance by Kenneth Broberg in the final round of the Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia 2016 at the Sydney Opera House.
In this video, the concerto is performed by Francesco Piemontesi with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Manfred Honeck.
Finally, this video presents a performance by Paul Lewis with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra conducted by Daniel Harding.
Piano Concerto No. 26 in D major, K. 537 (“Coronation”)
Mozart composed his Piano Concerto No. 26 in February of 1788.
The nickname “Coronation” is attributed to the fact that he performed this work when Leopold II was crowned Emperor at Frankfurt in October 1790.
Having been overlooked for participation in the official ceremonies, Mozart, at his own expense, directed a concert on October 15 at which he performed this concerto.
There is a very unusual feature to this concerto. In addition to omitting the tempi for two of the movements, Mozart also, in Tyson’s words, “did not write any notes for the piano’s left hand in a great many measures throughout the work.” For the less complex portions of the solo, it is clear that Mozart “knew perfectly well what he had to play” and so left them incomplete.
Most Mozart scholars have assumed that the later additions were made by the publisher Johann André.
In 1945, Alfred Einstein commented:
“…It is very Mozartean, while at the same time it does not express the whole or even the half of Mozart. It is, in fact, so ‘Mozartesque’ that one might say that in it Mozart imitated himself—no difficult task for him. It is both brilliant and amiable, especially in the slow movement; it is very simple, even primitive, in its relation between the solo and the tutti, and so completely easy to understand that even the nineteenth century always grasped it without difficulty…”
The concerto remains frequently performed today.
Interestingly enough, it was during this same period that some of Mozart’s operas were composed.
Both of these musical genres (concerto and opera) presented Mozart with a similar problem: placing an individual in a conflict in which opposite forces reveal their character through the drama of confrontation.
In opera the situation for the individual is largely psychological, a confrontation of personalities and motivations.
Mozart carries these concerns into the concerto: the individual voice of the solo instrument is pitted against – but also permeates – the sonority of the orchestra, creating a fusion of symphonic, operatic, and concerto forms, without the psychological implications associated with opera, but maintaining its form-defining harmonic tensions.
However, the “Coronation” Concerto differs from its predecessors in that it depends less on the harmonic tensions within the separate movements to define structure, and more on melodic succession to accomplish this task.
For instance, the first movement’s opening ritornello (orchestral exposition sans soloist) has several non-thematic transitional passages that serve to distinguish one section from another.
Several of these transitions do not fulfill their classical function of moving from one key or harmonic area to another; they grow out of a cadence or establishment of a key, functioning now merely as melodic extensions lacking strong harmonically directed flow.
Normally, Mozart would have saved these transitional phrases for the soloist to expand and develop; in this context, their placement within the first orchestral statement serves to loosen the harmonic and rhythmic structure.
As a consequence, the solo piano is given virtuosic figuration that creates its own tension in place of the missing harmonic tension; it nearly approaches virtuosity for its own sake.
In this sense, this concerto might be thought of as proto-Romantic in that the emphasis is given to virtuosic display over a classical integration and balance of melodic and harmonic materials between orchestra and soloist.
That it was prophetic of the concerns of Romantic composers is evident in that it was the most popular of all Mozart’s concertos during the 19th century.
The concerto has the following three movements:
Allegro
Larghetto
Allegretto
In the video, the concerto is performed by Oxana Shevchenko in the final round of the Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia 2016.
This video shows a performance by Homero Francesh with Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie conducted by Gerd Albrecht.
Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat major, K. 595
This is Mozart’s last piano concerto.
The work was followed by some years the series of highly successful concertos Mozart wrote. The concerto may have been first performed at a concert on 4 March 1791 in Jahn’s Hall by Mozart and the clarinetist Joseph Beer.
If so, this was Mozart’s last appearance in a public concert, as he took ill in September 1791 and died on 5 December 1791.
Mozart wrote down his cadenzas for the first and third movements.
The special position this concerto holds in the affections of Mozart-lovers owes much to its particular qualities, of course, but also to the notion that completed on 5 January 1791, it expresses the resignation and weariness of the spirit which had overtaken the composer after two years of dwindling success and reduced productivity.
And it cannot be denied that such an interpretation suits this gentle work, in which the ebullient virtuosity and extrovert gestures which had characterized the great piano concertos of the mid-1780s are rejected in favor of an altogether more personal species of utterance as if Mozart had tired of the rat-race of public display.
Modern research, however, has forced us to modify this view of the work, for it now appears that it was drafted in the incomplete score as early as 1788.
Perhaps Mozart shelved it when the prospect of a performance vanished, while his return to it at the start of 1791 may well have been in response to the need for a work to play at a benefit concert for the clarinettist Joseph Bähr on 4 March.
This is not to diminish the concerto. If its wistful lyricism can no longer be slotted quite so conveniently into the details of Mozart’s life – and if it is no longer the ‘work of farewell’ that one influential 20th-century Mozart scholar dubbed it – then its purely musical value as a composition of noble and restrained beauty remains for all to hear.
Like Symphony No. 40, it opens with a bar of accompaniment before the first theme appears, a yearning, looping violin melody that sets the mood for the rest of the movement.
As the opening orchestral section progresses a feeling of longing persists, reinforced by the music’s frequent turns to the minor, and the atmosphere hardly changes at the entry of the soloist where, instead of the usual operatic opposition of melodic material, we find the piano coming in with an uncontroversial restatement of the first theme.
Thereafter it is content to contribute only one agonized new theme of its own and, after the central development section has rumbled through a multitude of keys without letting its surface smoothness slip, the movement closes in the same quiet vein in which it had started.
The resigned and unargumentative mood of this first movement carries over into the second, an E flat major Larghetto in a three-part A–B–A form.
As in the first movement soloist and orchestra are here very much in thematic and spiritual accord, with the other instruments providing unquestioning support for the piano’s quiet complaints, offering sympathy and occasional outbursts of consolatory warmth.
This is music whose elegant simplicity of expression easily matches that of the more celebrated slow movement of the Piano Concerto No. 21.
The final rondo brings something, at least, of the brilliance of Mozart’s earlier concertos, but if its playful demeanor suggests that the composer has turned his back on the sadnesses of the preceding movements, a continued flirtation with the minor mode and an insistent preoccupation with the least stable part of the principal returning theme are enough to remind us of less complacent emotions.
The resulting faintly nostalgic feel makes a fitting close to a work in which, perhaps, we can after all hear Mozart recalling happier days.
The three movements are:
Allegro
Larghetto
Allegro
In the video, the concerto is performed by Murray Perahia and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
Finally, this video presents a performance by Beatrice Berrut with Berliner Kammerochester conducted by Philippe Bach.
Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra in C major, K. 299/297c
The piece is one of the most popular such concertos in the repertoire, as well as often being found on recordings dedicated to either one of its featured instruments.
Mozart wrote the concerto in April 1778, during his seven-month sojourn in Paris. It was commissioned by Adrien-Louis de Bonnières, Duc de Guînes (1735–1806), a flutist, for his use and for that of his eldest daughter, Marie-Louise-Philippine (1759–1796), a harpist, who was taking composition lessons from the composer, at the duke’s home, the Hôtel de Castries.
The soloists in the piece will sometimes play with the orchestra, and at other times perform as a duo while the orchestra is resting. The flute and harp alternate having the melody and accompanying lines. In some passages, they also create counterpoints with just each other. Mozart concertos are standard in how they move harmonically, as well as that they adhere to the three-movement form of fast-slow-fast:
I. Allegro
II. Andantino
III. Rondeau – Allegro
In the video the concerto is played by Guy Eshed (flute) and Julia Rovinsky (harp) with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta.
Mozart’s Clarinet concerto in A major, K. 622
The concerto is notable for its delicate interplay between soloist and orchestra, and for the lack of overly extroverted display on the part of the soloist.
This is a three-movement concerto that blends gently lyrical passages with those of demanding virtuosity to create a masterpiece of the clarinet’s repertoire.
It is widely considered the first great piece written for that relatively young instrument, invented in the early 18th century.
The Concerto was written for a fellow Mason, Anton Stadler. Stadler, who had been performing concerts in Vienna as early as 1781 on this relatively new instrument, joined the Vienna court orchestra in 1787.
He is, in effect, the man who gained acceptance for the clarinet as an integral member of the woodwind family with the vehicles Mozart created for him.
The work was completed just two months before his death in 1791.
Stadler was quite familiar with Mozart’s music, and he had participated in many performances of his friend’s symphonies and operas. Mozart adapted his melodies specifically to Stadler’s own instrument (a basset clarinet), which had a more extended low range than standard clarinets.
Mozart, at age 35, was concerned. Fashion had passed him by among the fickle Viennese aristocracy. But there were also other factors in the path of any artist’s well-being at the time, above all a treasury-draining war with Turkey which mired the empire in recession.
A pall settled over the empire, and particularly over once-jolly Vienna.
Patronage was fading, concerts were few and far between. Demand was, in a word, low. And what made Mozart a shining star above all his other gifts, his skill as a pianist (in his own concertos), and his fail-safe, teaching the piano to the children of the aristocracy, were no longer in demand.
Which is not to say that he lacked occupation in his final year: far from it. A succession of splendidly original works flowed from his pen.
During the writing the composer was suffering with his final illness, probably rheumatic fever.
He produced an astonishing quantity of works, of equally astonishing quality for a supposedly “forgotten” composer in the last year of his life.
But he was also a man deeply in debt and almost fanatical in his desire to erase that debt and provide for his family.
The Concerto bespeaks mellowness : music of utter peace and unassuming virtuosity.
The first movement could be regarded as all about the exposition section: there really is no contrasting theme, but this is barely noticeable – and cause for additional wonder – since the basic theme is so richly varied, so as to seem like a chain of related melodies, in terms of mood and its exploitation of the solo instrument’s vast range of color.
The adagio is music of sublime simplicity and peacefulness, while the rondo finale projects an air of gentle, slightly wistful contentment that is ever so poignantly at odds with the circumstances of the composer’s physical state at the time of its creation.
The first performance of the Clarinet Concerto was given on October 16, 1791, in Prague by Stadler, who had remained there after the September premiere of Mozart’s opera La Clemenza di Tito.
The three movements are:
Allegro
Adagio
Rondo. Allegro
In the video, the concerto is performed by Arngunnur Árnadóttir and Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Cornelius Meister.
Quintet in A major for Clarinet and Strings, K. 581
Perhaps no piece of chamber music sets so autumnal a mood as the Clarinet Quintet.
A nostalgic longing came naturally to Mozart’s musical expression, but he rarely vented it so freely, and at such uninterrupted length, as he did in this quintet, a major-key work with a minor-key aftertaste.
In fact, Mozart wrote the piece in autumn, at the end of September 1789. The times were tumultuous. Mozart’s life was also in distress. The novelty of his childhood successes were distant memories, and the Viennese public was applauding his piano playing less enthusiastically than just a few years earlier.
In July, his wife, Constanza, fell dangerously ill. Her leg became ulcerated, requiring extensive—and expensive—medical attention away from home.
While she was away, Mozart doubtless spent a good deal of time with friends.
One of his closest was the Austrian clarinetist Anton Stadler (1753–1812). Mozart admired him and bestowed on him both his Clarinet Quintet and his Clarinet Concerto.
In the Clarinet Quintet we hear Mozart at his most personal, allowing music to flow from his soul without answering to the terms of a commission or the exigencies of a public.
Mozart indulges himself with spacious pacing and a luscious timbre. The themes of the spacious first movement tend toward the wistful—or even the mournful—and the slow harmonic rhythm holds the vigor of the tempo marking (Allegro) in check.
The clarinet’s warm sonority goes hand in hand with the autumnal spirit, more so since Mozart spends a great deal of time emphasizing the instrument’s rich lower range.
Having set the mood with an Allegro that is hardly fast, Mozart turns to the profound soulfulness of the Larghetto, in which the clarinet offers a hushed song supported, with great harmonic subtlety, by the muted quartet of strings.
Together, the two movements achieve an expanse of the rarest poignancy from the composer, who would live only another two years.
Concerto-like dimensions rule over the third movement, too, a menuetto with two trios.
Despite making efforts to be good-humored, the Menuetto itself remains bittersweet. The strings reign over the first trio, anxiously, in the minor key.
The clarinet joins the ensemble to restate the opening minuet (without repeats), and in the second trio, its upturned phrases seem to laugh only with a pathetic, forced smile.
The musical aesthetics of Mozart’s time exerted pressure for a happy ending, and Mozart complies with a finale in which six variations are derived from a four-square, folk-inflected theme.
The movement explores the clarinet’s technical capacities and the sonic possibilities of combining it with the string quartet.
All the same, happiness seems to be something of an interloper, and Mozart allows the viola to inject ominous appoggiaturas in the minor-key third variation and the clarinet and violin to exchange final nostalgic memories in the fifth, before closing with polite assurance that the clouds are sure to pass.
The four movements are:
1 Allegro
2 Larghetto
3 Menuetto – Trio I – Trio II
4 Allegretto con Variazioni
In the video, the quintet is performed by Seiji Yokokawa (Clarinet), Pamela Frank (1st Violin), Tatsuya Yabe (2nd Violin), Yasushi Toyoshima (viola) and Yo-Yo Ma (Cello).
Requiem in D minor, K. 626
Mozart composed part of the Requiem in Vienna in late 1791, but it was unfinished at his death on 5 December the same year.
A completed version dated 1792 by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who commissioned the piece for a Requiem service to commemorate the anniversary of his wife’s death on 14 February.
The autograph manuscript shows the finished and orchestrated Introit in Mozart’s hand, and detailed drafts of the Kyrie and the sequence Dies Irae as far as the first eight bars of the Lacrimosa movement, and the Offertory.
It cannot be shown to what extent Süssmayr may have depended on now lost “scraps of paper” for the remainder; he later claimed the Sanctus and Benedictus and the Agnus Dei as his own.
Walsegg probably intended to pass the Requiem off as his own composition, as he is known to have done with other works. This plan was frustrated by a public benefit performance for Mozart’s widow Constanze.
In this video the requiem is performed by the Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic Choir and the soloists Sylwia Olszyńska – soprano, Agata Schmidt – mezzo-soprano, Karol Kozłowski – tenor and Adam Kutny – baritone conducted by Bartosz Michałowski. The performance took place on November 01, 2019, at Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall.
The movements are:
0:55 Introitus: Requiem aeternam
5:40 Kyrie eleison
Sequenz
8:06 Dies irae
9:47 Tuba mirum
13:31 Rex tremendae
15:51 Recordare
21:31 Confutatis
23:50 Lacrimosa
Offertorium
27:21 Domine Jesu
30:45 Versus: Hostias et preces
34:45 Sanctus
36:30 Benedictus
41:46 Agnus Dei
44:47 Communio: Lux aeterna
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Queen of the Night aria
“Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” (“Hell’s vengeance boils in my heart”), commonly abbreviated “Der Hölle Rache”, is an aria sung by the Queen of the Night, a coloratura soprano part, in the second act of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte). It depicts a fit of vengeful rage in which the Queen of the Night places a knife into the hand of her daughter Pamina and exhorts her to assassinate Sarastro, the Queen’s rival, else she will disown and curse Pamina.
Memorable, fast-paced, and menacingly grandiose, “Der Hölle Rache” is one of the most famous of all opera arias. This rage aria is often referred to as the Queen of the Night Aria, although the Queen sings another distinguished aria earlier in the opera, “O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn”.
The video shows a recording of the aria by Edda Moser, accompanied by the Bavarian State Opera under the baton of Wolfgang Sawallisch. The Edda Moser recording is included in a collection of music from Earth on the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft.
Here is another very fine video performance of the aria by Natalie Dessay. Note that the music starts at 1.57 in the video.
Dove sono i bei momenti
This wonderful aria is from Le Nozze di Figaro. In translation the text is:
Where are those happy moments
Of sweetness and pleasure?
Where have they gone,
These vows of a deceiving tongue?
Then why, if everything for me
Is changed to tears and grief,
Has the memory of that happiness
Not faded from my breast?
Ah! if only my constancy
In yearning lovingly for him always
Could bring the hope
Of changing his ungrateful heart!
In the video, the aria is performed by the soprano Gundula Janowitz with the Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin conducted by Karl Böhm. The performance of Gundula Janowitz is second to none. This is the most beautiful, pure, divine, everlasting performance in existence.
