Pages

Tuesday 20 November 2018

Michael Collins plays Mozart:
Themes and variations

4 December 2018: Stratford Play House
5 December 2018: Royal Birmingham Conservatoire

  • Igor Stravinsky – Concerto in D for string orchestra ‘Basle’
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Clarinet Concerto in A major, K.622
  • Igor Stravinsky – Concerto in E flat for chamber orchestra ‘Dumbarton Oaks’
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Symphony No.40 in G minor ‘Great G minor Symphony’, K.550

Today’s concert is a rich demonstration of just how broad the classification – and content – of ‘classical’ music can be. Stravinsky’s paired concertos are Neoclassical (1920-1950, or thereabouts); and their inspiration and form stem mainly from the Baroque period (approximately 1600-1750). Mozart (1756-1791), of course, is held up by many as the very model of a Classical (1750-1820 or so) composer; but – especially at the outset of his life and career – was, of course, also indebted to the works of Bach, Handel, Lully, etc..

However, it did not take long for young Wolfgang to stretch the categorization of his output and dig the foundations of what would become to be known as the Romantic (roughly 1780-1910) – despite Britten claiming that “A certain rot… set in with Beethoven”. Nor, listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, is it difficult to find such defining personal passion and self-centred sentiment within, or to be intensely moved by them. All of which only goes to show why the above numbers (apart from Mozart’s) are so very “thereabouts”, “approximately”, “or so”, and “roughly”; and may explain why Descartes once opined that “Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare…” – although Hamlet’s written claim to Ophelia that “I am ill at these numbers” may be much more accurate!

The case I am trying to make is that Mozart – despite, to that “many”, being just the creator of memorable melodies (such as lies at the centre of today’s heartbreaking Clarinet Concerto) – not only crossed musical divides; but, in many cases, actually invented them. And the ‘Great G minor Symphony’, which closes the concert, is the perfect demonstration of that: evoking Classicism and Romanticism, and predicting Serialism, all in the space of around twenty-five minutes. In other words, his music is all his own; it defies (or at least pushes back at the boundaries of) classification… – although there is no doubt in my mind that his œuvre can be labelled that of a genuine genius.


PS: Even defining the overarching term ‘classical music’ can be laborious; but I am happy to accept Wikipedia’s – that it is “Art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western culture, including both liturgical (religious) and secular music”. If you think you know, and/or can do better, please email your suggestion to writer@orchestraoftheswan.org with the subject ‘Definition’. The best entry will win two complimentary tickets for a concert of your choice, and will be published in the next programme.


Friday 19 October 2018

Tai Murray plays Mendelssohn:
Themes and variations

2 November 2018: The Courtyard, Hereford
6 November 2018: Stratford Play House
7 November 2018: Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
8 November 2018: Cheltenham Town Hall

  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Overture, ‘The Marriage of Figaro’
  • Felix Mendelssohn – Violin Concerto in E minor, Op.64
  • Felix Mendelssohn – Sinfonia for Strings No.6 in E flat major
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Symphony No.25 in G minor, K.183

Reviewing a performance (by OOTS, of course) of “The six movements extracted from Mendelssohn’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, in May 2016, I contended that the composer I have subsequently named my cat after…

…was an undoubted genius…. That he produced his first violin concerto – not the one [you will] be singing for the next week… – when still in shorts; followed it not much later with a string octet that has never been beaten; wrote some great oratorios; magnificent symphonies; and some of the best piano pieces I have ever managed, fumblingly, to play – all before dying at a stupidly young age (not much older than Mozart, indeed) – should be evidence enough. But anyone who can transform an orchestra into a braying donkey must rank amongst the very greatest composers of all time!

Tonight’s Sinfonia for Strings – the sixth of a set of twelve, written between the astonishing ages of twelve and fourteen – can also be slotted easily into this prodigy’s long list of precocious masterworks: his command of the smaller orchestra (and particularly of strings) easily on a par with this concert’s other great wunderkind, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

And, although the temptation is to dream of, say, Mendelssohn’s Fifteenth Symphony, or Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.67 (alleging, perhaps, that “only the good die young”), I would prefer to concentrate on the incredibly long list of incredibly wonderful works that thankfully survive from their abbreviated existences (Mozart dying at thirty-five, Mendelssohn at thirty-eight) – both, like Schubert (dead at thirty-one), perhaps, compelled by some premonition to communicate as much of the beauty they found in and around themselves as frequently and urgently as possible.

Interestingly, the works before the interval are both from the composers’ later outputs; whereas those following are the earlier pieces. However, all four compositions are readily matched in style to their creators: their maturity having ripened – if not come totally to fruition – during their temperate teenage years.


Tuesday 11 September 2018

English Fantasies for String Orchestra:
Themes and variations

25 September 2018: Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon

  • Arcangelo Corelli – Concerto Grosso in F major, op6, no2
  • Michael Tippett – Fantasia Concertante on a theme of Corelli
  • Thomas Tallis – Spem in alium
  • Frank Bridge – Idyll for String Quartet, op6, no2
  • Benjamin Britten – Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge
  • Thomas Tallis – Why fum’th in fight: The Gentils spite
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

As well as all of tonight’s instrumental pieces being written for various configurations of string orchestra, they also, I believe, have an intense and unremitting spiritual vein running through them – which is more than matched by the two choral works of Thomas Tallis. (I would like to cite this as proof that the English stiff upper lip is merely a nationalist and populist meme and myth: and that our hearts bleed, and our eyes weep, as instantaneously and copiously as any other nation’s – including Italy, of course: where Arcangelo Corelli generated some of the most expressive and captivating Baroque music still in existence.)

Such emotion, I know, is likely to be be amplified by tonight’s location – surely one of this country’s most famous and beautiful parish churches – especially its resonant acoustic. I therefore repeat the request I penned for the orchestra’s previous performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis – but now ask it for every single one of tonight’s seven glorious masterpieces:

…especially as this is one of the very few pieces of music in which we are privileged to hear (what sounds remarkably like) God sighing… – which is that, after that final, astonishing, numinous G-major chord has faded away, you would allow a few seconds to pass, please, before rewarding [Stacey] and the orchestra [or Suzzie and the choir] with the applause they will undoubtedly deserve.

In other words, please give the ancient mortar and stones of this glorious building time to absorb yet more of the wondrous atmosphere they have indubitably experienced in their eight centuries of history; and – for those of us who will frequently be in need of a tissue of two, after “finding something in our eyes” – space in which to find ourselves, and our handkerchiefs. Thank you.


PS: Although Corelli’s and Bridge’s works were written two centuries apart, you may notice that they possess identical opus numbers. Surely this is a coincidence? [Thankfully, as far as I know, Tallis did not number or catalogue his huge output of mostly religious music. Not that I’m superstitious. (Touch wood.)]


Monday 28 May 2018

Latin America meets Classical:
Themes and variations

5 June 2018: Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon

  • Aaron Copland – Three Latin American Sketches
  • Lucía Caruso – ‘Light and Wind’ piano concerto (world premiere)
  • Pedro H. da Silva – ‘Snow’, for Portuguese guitar and orchestra (world premiere)
  • Lucía Caruso and Pedro H. da Silva (orchestrated by Pedro H. da Silva) – ‘Folía’, for Portuguese guitar, piano, and orchestra
  • Aaron Copland – Appalachian Spring
In 1959 the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, asked me to write a short work for orchestra. The ‘Paisaje Mexicano’ and ‘Danza de Jalisco’ were completed in time for performance in July of that year…. Both pieces were first performed in the United States under [my] baton at a private invitation concert given by the Pan American Union in 1965…. [However, I] decided not to release the two movements for general performance before adding a third section. This was accomplished in 1971 with the completion of ‘Estribillo’, based on Venezuelan popular materials…. In 1968, a two-piano arrangement of the ‘Danza de Jalisco’ was published, with some revisions of the original orchestral version. These changes were later incorporated in the completed three-movement work, and the whole given the title ‘Three Latin American Sketches’.

Thus Aaron Copland introduced the first performance of his last composition for orchestra, by Andre Kostelanetz and the New York Philharmonic, on 7 June 1972. Lighter in nature than much of his earlier output – although he counselled that the Sketches are “not so light as to be pop-concert material” – they contain no hint of such finality.

As with many new works (even one with such a long gestation period), the handwritten, spiral-bound score used by Kostelanetz for the premiere (held online in the NY Phil archives) is brimming with last-minute amends and annotations; as well as details of what should appear in Boosey & Hawkes’ final printed version. Fascinating to follow for the purpose of penning a programme note; but – although it is apparent Kostelanetz knew Copland’s composition thoroughly – I would not have wished to conduct from it!

Leonard Bernstein’s marks on his score of Appalachian Spring are a little less dense. They reinforce, though, the almost incomprehensible amount of work that conductors must complete before they first stand in front of the orchestra: their understanding of what is now open before them on the podium exhaustive, but lacking one key ingredient: the similarly in-depth input and feedback which the other performers bring – and not just in rehearsal. One of the joys of live music is that no performance is ever fixed: a figurative hummingbird flapping its wings in the opening bars can bring happy innovation several pages later – and perhaps colour all that follows. So when you applaud Bruce, tonight: please do so with a little more awareness, perhaps; and even greater admiration!

Monday 7 May 2018

Beethoven’s Triple Concerto:
Themes and variations

15 May 2018: Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon
23 May 2018: Town Hall, Birmingham
25 May 2018: Town Hall, Cheltenham

  • Ludwig van Beethoven – Overture, ‘Coriolan’, op62
  • Ludwig van Beethoven – Triple Concerto for Piano, Violin and Cello in C major, op56
  • Felix Mendelssohn – Symphony no4 ‘Italian’ in A major, op90

When we are immersed in a great novel, we may wonder just how much of the author, or the author’s life, can be read within it. Likewise with poetry – although this does have an innate tendency to be autobiographical. But with music – unless we have documentary evidence; or the composer has also penned its lyrics – it is much harder to fathom. Many though have seen (or heard) tonight’s overture as a self-portrait: despite its front-and-centre reference to the Roman leader Caius Marcius Coriolanus (or ‘Coriolan’, in German). With its occasional thematic reminders of the Fifth Symphony, written in the same year, 1807, there is no doubt that the work musically encompasses some form of desperate mental struggle. Whether that fight involves Beethoven facing his deafness; or the semi-legendary patrician as he matures from brute to peace-monger (under the onslaught of his mother’s and wife’s entreaties), is, though, solely for the listener to determine.

Notwithstanding, Mendelssohn’s marvellous symphony is definitely autobiographical: as we know, not only from the many letters he wrote to family and friends, but from the fact that it follows his well-recorded ‘grand tour’ around Europe – which included a lengthy period in Italy (as well as Scotland, of course)! Although it eventually closes in a minor key, there is little doubt of the happiness this journey brought its composer. The joyful music he wrote in response is (hopefully) truly infectious!

It is doubtful whether anything other than Beethoven’s innate genius attaches to the Triple Concerto, however; although the short central movement is extremely moving. Following the examples of Haydn’s and Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertantes – for violin, cello, oboe and bassoon; and oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn; respectively – both performed by OOTS, last season – it contains some of its composer’s most awe-inspiring and enjoyable music. (It is a shame, therefore, that all three of these great composers’ concertos share another trait – that of underperformance – especially when placed side-by-side with this concert’s celebrated overture and symphony.)

Indubitably, though, it is music’s effect on the individual that is most meaningful. There is nothing wrong, therefore, with being cheered by Coriolanus’ fate (killed by his erstwhile allies, according to Shakespeare; nobly dying on his own sword, according to Heinrich Joseph von Collin – who supposedly influenced Beethoven); or with sobbing at the Saltarello which concludes the concert.

Wednesday 2 May 2018

Italian Sunshine:
Themes and variations

9 May 2018: Forum Theatre, Malvern Theatres

  • Gioachino Rossini – Overture, ‘Italian Girl in Algiers’
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Piano Concerto no21 in C major, K467
  • Felix Mendelssohn – Symphony no4 ‘Italian’ in A major, op90

Sitting down to write this on the first steadfastly sunny day of Spring, just over a month ago, the blue sky seen through my window – punctuated with only the occasional faint ellipsis of cloud – proved too much of a temptation: and I ventured outside, leaving my labour behind. There, I soon discovered that Winter was still making itself all too present: with its icy winds nibbling at my face and fingers, and the sodden turf beneath my feet oozing with the evidence of March’s heavy downpours. The sap was rising, though (even if the mercury wasn’t): the hellebores, daffodils and hyacinths were in full flower; our oak tree laden with buds; the jackdaws cautiously collecting its discarded twigs to reinforce their distant nests; the blackbirds, robins and finches singing heartily. The only music which came to my mind, though, was Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia antartica.

Back at my desk, I heard the central heating – the thermostat having been tickled by those brumal breezes – clear its lungs, and creak into action (like myself) once more. What was needed, of course – to truly fulfil the new season’s potential (and to thaw out my nose) – was such warmth. Not artificially generated though; but that which naturally coexists with the azure above and below the Mediterranean horizon; that which is embedded in that region’s winds – the zephyr, sirocco, and fittingly-styled maestro – that which bursts forth from tonight’s balmy programme!

Thus we have a concert not only of “sunshine” (Italian, certainly; but with a gentle touch of the Viennese, by way of Sweden) – but also wit (combined with subtle feminism); beauty (paired with virtuosity); and radiant joy (contrasted with brief stateliness). Oh, and youth! (Although how many concerts have you been to where Mozart is the senior composer – at the grand old age of twenty-nine?!)

As Mendelssohn (twenty-four, when tonight’s symphony was first performed) once wrote:

This is Italy! And now has begun what I have always thought… to be the supreme joy in life. And I am loving it. Today was so rich that now, in the evening, I must collect myself a little….

Even if the weather outside is frightful, I guarantee you will leave the theatre fully prepared for its onslaught: with a smile on your face; a tune (or two) on your lips; and warm sunlight in your heart.

Wednesday 4 April 2018

Debussy and Rodrigo:
Themes and variations

17 April 2018: Stratford ArtsHouse
18 April 2018: Town Hall, Birmingham

  • Claude Debussy – Children’s Corner, L.113
  • Joaquín Rodrigo – Concierto de Aranjuez
  • Claude Debussy – Petite Suite, L.65
  • Georges Bizet – Symphony in C

Today’s concert features two orchestral arrangements, that, on hearing – like Grieg’s Holberg Suite, played earlier in the season – readily draw a very effective instrumental veil over their pianistic origins. As I wrote last November: “the effects [Grieg] conjures make it difficult to believe that this was originally composed for piano…! So reliant is the suite on the startling textures only strings can produce, that it feels utterly original.”

The difference, here, is that Debussy’s works were arranged by other musicians: each of whom, though, knew the composer, and his music, exceeding well. They therefore both succeed in exploring and exploiting the instrumental inferences the original compositions contain, whilst remaining sensitive to their quintessence: bringing further life and force to the stories held within. For instance, the mystical pipes and horns of the Petite Suite’s ‘Menuet’ are given wistful flesh by Henri Büsser, with his inspired utilization of the cor anglais; whilst ‘The little shepherd’ of Children’s Corner is blessed, by André Caplet, with his own sonorous flute (in the shape of an oboe…).

Büsser, by the way, was a quite remarkable man: living to the age of 101. In an interview given on his 100th birthday, in 1972, he recounted how he had approached his friend for permission to transcribe Petite Suite – “already having the orchestration in my head”. “Oh!” replied the composer, “you can’t know the joy you bring me; with my whole heart I authorize you to do this!” Indeed, Debussy conducted today’s arrangement many times: it being such a perfect example of the arranger’s skilful art.

Coincidentally, Petite Suite – like Rodrigo’s guitar concerto, which precedes it today – has also been arranged for brass band: in fact for the very same ensemble (the astounding Grimethorpe Colliery Band) that appears in the film Brassed Off – and that so helped contribute to its well-deserved fame. No less valid, the result is proof that fresh truth and beauty can frequently be found when music is dressed in such different, but befitting, clothes.

In writing my programme notes for Debussy’s ravishing music, I have therefore listened to (and sometimes played through passages from) the original pieces, before absorbing myself in the orchestral arrangements: hoping to discover and describe (if not always explain) some of the magic that has been worked upon them.

Tuesday 27 February 2018

Peter Donohoe plays Shostakovich:
Themes and variations

13 March 2018: Stratford ArtsHouse
14 March 2018: Town Hall, Birmingham

  • Sergei Prokofiev – Symphony no1 ‘Classical’ in D major, op25
  • Dmitri Shostakovich – Piano Concerto no2 in F major, op102
  • Franz Schubert – Symphony no3 in D major, D200

In the visual arts, according to the Tate, “Neoclassicism was a particularly pure form of classicism that emerged from about 1750”; whilst the original ‘classicism’ was that which “made reference to ancient Greek or Roman style”. Confusingly, though, ‘classical’ music (see The Oxford Dictionary of Music, for example) is generally labelled as materializing around the same time (1750) – following the Baroque, and preceding the Romantic; “covering the development of the symphony and concerto” – with ‘neoclassical’ music then being produced between 1920 and 1950.

Settling on such precise dates is, of course, prone to spark dispute; and I, for one, would claim that Grieg’s spectacular Holberg Suite – from 1884; and performed by OOTS in November’s concert – is definitely neoclassical: although not yet, as such an outlier, part of any definite trend. Today’s first work – formally christened by its composer as ‘Classical’ – was also produced outside those dates (during 1916-1917): and yet surely sets the standard for all that followed. (Unlike Stravinsky, though, who would return to earlier melodies and musical models frequently throughout his life, Prokofiev described this symphony’s composition as merely a “passing phase”!)

Whilst we all know, albeit vaguely, what classical music sounds like (and therefore, by extrapolation, its neoclassical offspring, as well); and recognize it when we hear it; it is harder to say exactly what it is. As with last month’s programme, I shall resort to quoting Michael Kennedy – as his pithy summary is surely as good as it gets!

Music of an orderly nature, with qualities of clarity and balance, and emphasizing formal beauty rather than emotional expression (which is not to say that emotion is lacking); music generally regarded as having permanent rather than ephemeral value.

Fortunately for us, ending as it does with Schubert’s Third Symphony, this concert provides us with the opportunity to compare structurally similar works from both the classical and neoclassical eras, and therefore draw our own conclusions. That these astonishing compositions are both in the same brilliant key of D major may also be to our advantage (although neither one remains in that key for very long). How we categorize Shostakovich’s exuberant concerto, which separates them, I do not know. It is so startlingly original – and so unlike most of his previous, Stalin-shadowed output – that it probably belongs in a class all of its own!

Monday 26 February 2018

Jennifer Pike plays Tchaikovsky:
Themes and variations

12 March 2018: Forum Theatre, Malvern Theatres

  • Sergei Prokofiev – Symphony no1 ‘Classical’ in D major, op25
  • Franz Schubert – Symphony no3 in D major, D200
  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Violin Concerto in D major, op35

Tonight’s concert begins and ends with bright, golden fireworks… – or yellow ones, at least: Russian composers Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) and Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) both agreeing (for once) that this was the characteristic colour, for them, of the key of D major. In his influential work of 1785, Ideas Towards an Aesthetic of Music, Christian Schubart (1739-1791) – summarizing the thoughts of many earlier musicians – described it as “The key of triumph, of Hallelujahs, of war-cries, of victory”; adding that “Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key”. We are therefore in for an enjoyable evening of what philosopher (and composer) Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) called “gaiety or brilliance”: as not only do our wonderful first and last works start and finish in this flaxen key, but so does our enthralling central one!

Not that this means we are in for an evening of invariability: if anything, the music programmed tonight demonstrates just how spectacularly disparate orchestral ‘classical’ music can be. For example: a comparison of the two “inviting symphonies”, both fashioned to long-standing formal rules – particularly as regards structure – reveals many more differences than similarities. They both just happen to open and close with the same chord. (Although it then takes Prokofiev a mere eleven bars to change key completely: to the “innocent, simple, naïve” C major!) After all, the key which each revolves around, is only a starting-point: all it does is unlock the musical doorway through which we, and the players, ‘visit’ each composition.

As for Tchaikovsky’s miraculous work: the key of D major is a favourite one for violin concertos – think of Mozart’s second and fourth; of Beethoven’s, and of Brahms (also written in 1878); and even of Prokofiev’s first… – as the instrument’s open strings are particularly resonant in this key. (As, of course, are the orchestra’s! Indeed, the last chord we will hear tonight uses this characteristic to full effect: as the strings triple- or quadruple-stop – that is, play three, or all four strings, simultaneously – and, in this case, fortissimo…!)

You might think from the descriptors above that an evening packed full of what scholar Albert Lavignac (1846-1916) dubbed “joyful, brilliant, alert” D major might be too much of a good thing. I don’t believe it is; and I hope, at the end of the evening, as you call Jennifer back to the stage once more, that you won’t either!

Tuesday 6 February 2018

Roderick Williams and English Song:
Themes and variations

13 February 2018: Stratford ArtsHouse
14 February 2018: Town Hall, Birmingham
6 April 2018: Worcester Cathedral

  • Ralph Vaughan Williams – Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams – Five Mystical Songs
  • Gerald Finzi – Let Us Garlands Bring, op18
  • Gerald Finzi – Romance for String Orchestra, op11
  • John Ireland – A Downland Suite

Ralph Vaughan Williams first encountered the folk-song Dives and Lazarus in 1893, when he was twenty-one; and he later said that “I had the sense of recognition – here’s something which I have known all my life, only I didn’t know it!” Michael Kennedy characterized the tune as emanating “from the soil of England”; and one of the end results (RVW was quite addicted to using it), which opens today’s concert, sounds (nearly) as natural as the composer breathing.

But why does this music feel ‘English’? What makes it so? Is it just that we have become accustomed to its ‘shape’, its style; or is there truly an identifiable vernacular? (In other words: would we sense, somehow, that this concert’s musical origins were all so ‘local’, if we had not seen the programme and its title; nor heard these composers before?)

John Ireland – whose A Downland Suite completes the programme – said that “folk-song influenced Vaughan Williams, but I have been more influenced by plainsong”: despite Charles Stanford (one of the originators, with Parry, of the broad style which so influenced the young Elgar) accusing him of sounding “all Brahms and water”! And yet both composers – as well as sharing Stanford as a teacher (although RVW went on to study with Ravel) – share a certain audible je ne sais quoi – or at least my (admittedly capacious) taste easily encompasses both (as well as Holst, Finzi, and Walton; Britten, Tippett, and Maxwell Davies). They also move me in a way that is at odds with the emotions provoked by, say, Mozart, or Messiaen; they speak to a different part of my heart (although I must emphasize that there is no room in there for nationalism of any political piquancy).

I wonder, were I not born of “this sceptred isle”, if they would still affect me like this. Elgar said (to Ireland), referencing The Dream of Gerontius and Richard Strauss, that “No-one in this country took any notice of my music until a German told them it was good”. In other words: I really do not have answers (certainly not simple ones) to the questions I posed above; I simply do not know! But maybe you will come to a different conclusion: once impressed by five outstanding examples of twentieth-century English music.


Friday 12 January 2018

John Lill plays Beethoven:
Themes and variations

19 January 2018: Forum Theatre, Malvern Theatres

  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Overture ‘Don Giovanni’, K527
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Symphony no41 ‘Jupiter’ in C major, K551
  • Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano Concerto no3 in C minor, op37

This evening’s concert features – arguably – two of the greatest composers who ever lived: both with major works composed hastily during periods of significant trial and tribulation. Firstly, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – here in financial straits, after the failure of his latest opera; and possibly on the verge of depression – three years before his death and his final great outpourings. And then Ludwig van Beethoven, as he began to break free of his great idol’s influence to find his own voice: despite struggling to come to terms with the onset of deafness – especially the concomitant tinnitus.

Don Giovanni had been hailed a palpable hit at its first performance in Prague, in October 1787; but, just over six months later, in Vienna, a revised version met with failure. Facing this setback head-on, Mozart immediately began composing his three final, miraculous, symphonies: managing somehow to complete them in successive summer months.

The last of these – our second work, tonight – even in the light of its two remarkable symphonic companions, K543 and K550 – is utterly astonishing. It simply does not matter whether you consider ‘Jupiter’ the greatest symphony ever written (as I do) – or merely(!) the greatest symphony of one of the “greatest composers who ever lived” – it will always stand as an imposing, sunlit monument to the man and the genre. (Sadly, it seems unlikely that it was ever performed in Mozart’s lifetime.)

It is difficult not to consider Don Giovanni his greatest opera, as well (although his later “great outpouring”, Die Zauberflöte, K620 – certainly more successful in his lifetime; and more frequently performed, today – must also be a contender). The overture is rumoured to have been composed on the day of its first performance (29 October 1787). However, Mozart records the completion of the opera as the day before! Whatever the case, as with the symphony, there are absolutely no audible signs of such alacrity.

Only music from the pen of a composer of Beethoven’s stature could succeed such masterpieces: with a work also premiered in Vienna (in April 1803, alongside his first two symphonies) – however, yet again, to mixed reviews. This time, though, the score had not even been finalized: the composer, as soloist, playing reportedly from “nothing but empty pages [with] a few Egyptian hieroglyphs… scribbled down to serve as clues”!