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MOZART: Violin Concerto No. 4 / Sinfonia Concertante
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)
Sinfonia concertante in E Flat Major, K.
364
364
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in
Salzburg in 1756, the younger and second surviving child of Leopold Mozart, a
musician in the service of the ruling Archbishop. The same year brought the
publication of Leopold Mozart's book on violin-playing, a compilation that won
him a wide reputation. Nevertheless his career was sacrificed before long to
that of his son, whose genius he soon realised and to the fostering of which he
dedicated his energies. He remained until his death in 1787 Vice-Kapellmeister
in Salzburg, his final years darkened by his son's departure for Vienna in
1781.
In his childhood Mozart excelled as a
keyboard-player, his skill shown in performance, in sight-reading and in
improvisation, and as a violinist. With his older sister Nannerl he toured
Europe, exciting wonder wherever he went. Adolescence proved less satisfactory.
In 1771 the old Archbishop of Salzburg, an indulgent patron, died, and was succeeded by Count Colloredo, a son of the Imperial Vice-Chancellor, a prelate, with progressive views, coupled with a precise idea of what was due to him from those in his employ. At the age of thirteen Mozart had been appointed third concert-master of the court orchestra, unpaid. Under the new Archbishop he was given the paid position of concert-master, but there were now severe restrictions on his freedom, exercised in earlier years in extended tours that had taken him to Paris, to London and on several occasions to Italy. Salzburg, furthermore, could hardly satisfy Mozart's ambitions as a composer, or his father's justified hopes for his son's material advancement. In 1777 he was allowed to resign from the Archbishop's service, an option offered also to his father, but prudently refused, in order to travel to Mannheim and to Paris. The object of the journey, on which he was accompanied by his mother, who fell ill and died during their stay in Paris, was to seek a better appointment. In January 1779 he returned home, reluctantly accepting the appointment of cour1 organist in Salzburg.
In 1771 the old Archbishop of Salzburg, an indulgent patron, died, and was succeeded by Count Colloredo, a son of the Imperial Vice-Chancellor, a prelate, with progressive views, coupled with a precise idea of what was due to him from those in his employ. At the age of thirteen Mozart had been appointed third concert-master of the court orchestra, unpaid. Under the new Archbishop he was given the paid position of concert-master, but there were now severe restrictions on his freedom, exercised in earlier years in extended tours that had taken him to Paris, to London and on several occasions to Italy. Salzburg, furthermore, could hardly satisfy Mozart's ambitions as a composer, or his father's justified hopes for his son's material advancement. In 1777 he was allowed to resign from the Archbishop's service, an option offered also to his father, but prudently refused, in order to travel to Mannheim and to Paris. The object of the journey, on which he was accompanied by his mother, who fell ill and died during their stay in Paris, was to seek a better appointment. In January 1779 he returned home, reluctantly accepting the appointment of cour1 organist in Salzburg.
In 1780 there came a commission for a new
opera for the Elector of Bavaria in Munich, staged early in 1781, and this was
followed by a visit to Vienna in the entourage of his patron. Apparent
restrictions on his freedom to perform as he wished in Vienna led Mozart to
quarrel with the Archbishop, a dispute that ended in his dismissal. For the
remaining ten years of his life he remained in Vienna, encumbered by a wife and
intermittently increasing family, but without the security of a patron or the
support of regular paternal advice. Initial success in the theatre and as a
keyboard-player, particularly in a magnificent series of piano concertos he wrote
for his own use, was followed by a period of depression, when he found it
increasingly difficult to meet the expenses of a style of life to which he had
been accustomed. In spite of his father's admonitions from Salzburg, he no
longer practised the violin, although he played the viola in informal
performances of chamber music in which he was joined by Haydn, Dittersdorf and
the composer Vanhal. By 1791 his fortunes seemed to have taken a turn for the
better, with the success of the German opera The Magic Flute. He died after a
short illness in December of the same year.
If Mozart was preoccupied with the
fortepiano in Vienna in the 1780s, the previous decade in Salzburg had found
him giving much greater attention to the violin. He was concert-master of the
court orchestra and took the opportunity on a number of occasions of appearing
as a soloist, as he did in the autumn of 1777 in Augsburg and in Munich at the
beginning of his journey to Mannheim and Paris. In a letter to his father from
Augsburg, Leopold Mozart's native city, he criticised the standard of
violin-playing in the Augsburg orchestra and relates how he has played a violin
concerto there by Vanhal and his own so-called Strassburg concerto,
variously identified as K. 218, or possibly K. 216.
Mozart wrote his five violin concertos
for his own use in Salzburg or for the use of the Italian violinist Antonio
Brunetti, a man Mozart was later to stigmatise as a disgrace to his profession,
a reflection on his manners and morals. The concertos were also played in
Salzburg by Johann Anton Kolb, for whom Leopold Mozart implies one of the
concertos had been written. In a letter to his wife and son on 26th September
1777 Leopold Mozart describes a concert given by Kolb for the foreign merchants
and including a performance of one of the violin concertos. After the concert
he tells how they all got drunk and pushed one another in procession round the
room, succeeding in breaking the central chandelier. Three weeks later he adds
a description of a performance of Mozart's Strassburg concerto by
Brunetti in the theatre, while the actors were changing their costume. From
Paris in September the following year Mozart talks of the possibility of
revising his violin concertos and shor1ening them to suit French taste, a task
he never underlook.
The Violin Concerto No.4 in D major,
K. 218, whether identical with the Strassburg concerto or not - the
nickname would, in any case, be derived presumably from a fortuitous
resemblance of a theme in the last movement to a Strassburg dance - was
completed in October 1775. It is scored for pairs of oboes and horns with
strings. The first movement, a bold Allegro, is introduced by a declaration of
the principal theme, later to be taken up by the soloist. There is a lyrical slow
movement and a final Rondeau - Mozart uses the French spelling of the word - in
which two disparate thematic elements are contrasted, the first an elegant
Andante grazioso and the second a rapider Allegro, forming a movement teeming
with prodigal melodic invention, including an unexpected dance in G major, a
section of it allowing the violinist to provide a drone bass for the solo
theme.
Mozart's stay in Mannheim in 1777 and the
early months of 1778 introduced him to an orchestra that the English musician
Charles Burney had described as an army of generals. It was for the remarkable
wind-players of the orchestra that he wrote his first sinfonia concertante,
confidently expecting a performance in Paris, when the necessary musicians were
there together in 1778. In Salzburg once more in 1779 he turned his
attention again to the form and completed his Sinfonia concertante in E flat
for violin and viola, K. 364, scoring it for the usual Salzburg orchestra, with
pairs of oboes and horns, together with strings. The viola part makes use of
scordatura, with the instrument tuned up a semitone, although some modern
players prefer to play the work on an instrument tuned in the normal way.
During the same months of 1779 he started a Sinfonia concert ante for solo violin, viola and cello, but never completed it, while in Mannheim a year before he had written the first 120 bars of the first movement of a similar composition for solo violin, solo piano and an orchestra that included flutes, trumpets and drums, in addition to the usual oboes, horns and strings.
During the same months of 1779 he started a Sinfonia concert ante for solo violin, viola and cello, but never completed it, while in Mannheim a year before he had written the first 120 bars of the first movement of a similar composition for solo violin, solo piano and an orchestra that included flutes, trumpets and drums, in addition to the usual oboes, horns and strings.
The Sinfonia concertante for
violin and viola opens solemnly, the orchestral exposition leading to the entry
of the two soloists together, followed by a movement in which generally one
player is to answer the other in antiphonal duet. A composed cadenza for violin
and viola leads to the conclusion of the movement. After a simpler statement of
the principal theme of the slow movement, the solo violin enters, echoed by the
viola, the two solo instruments sometimes joining together and sometimes
responding one to the other in close imitation. The work ends with a final
movement in which the solo violin follows the orchestra with its own lively
melody, imitated by the viola, a procedure continued in other strands of melody
in music of felicitous and fertile invention.
Takako Nishizaki
Takako Nishizaki is one of Japan's finest violinists. After studying with her father, Shinji Nishizaki, she became the first student of Shinichi Suzuki, the creator of the famous Suzuki Method of teaching children to play the violin. Subsequently she went to Japan's famous Toho School of Music, and to the Juilliard School in the United States, where she studied with Joseph Fuchs.
Takako Nishizaki is one of Japan's finest violinists. After studying with her father, Shinji Nishizaki, she became the first student of Shinichi Suzuki, the creator of the famous Suzuki Method of teaching children to play the violin. Subsequently she went to Japan's famous Toho School of Music, and to the Juilliard School in the United States, where she studied with Joseph Fuchs.
Takako Nishizaki won Second Prize In the
1964 Leventritt International Competition (First Prize went to Itzhak Perlman),
First Prize in the 1967 Juilliard Concerto Competition (with Japan's Nobuko
Imai, the well-known viola-player), and several awards in lesser competitions.
She was only the second student at Juilliard, after Michael Rabin, to win her school's coveted Fritz Kreisler Scholarship, established by the great violinist himself.
She was only the second student at Juilliard, after Michael Rabin, to win her school's coveted Fritz Kreisler Scholarship, established by the great violinist himself.
Takako Nishizaki is one of the most
frequently recorded violinists in the world today. She has recorded ten volumes
of her complete Fritz Kreisler Edition, many contemporary Chinese violin
concertos, among them the Concerto by Du Ming-xin, dedicated to her, and a
growing number of rare, previously unrecorded violin concertos, among them
concertos by Spohr, Beriot, Cui, Respighi, Rubinstein and Joachim. For Naxos
she has recorded Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Mozart's Violin Concertos
Nos. 3 and 5, Sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven and the Mendelssohn,
Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Bruch and Brahms concertos.
Stephen Gunzenhauser
The American conductor Stephen Gunzenhauser was educated in New York, continuing his studies at Oberlin, at the Salzburg Mozarteum, at the New England Conservatory and at Cologne State Conservatory. His period at the last of these was the result of a Fulbright Scholarship, followed by an award from the West German Government and a first prize in the conducting competition held in the Spanish town of Santiago.
The American conductor Stephen Gunzenhauser was educated in New York, continuing his studies at Oberlin, at the Salzburg Mozarteum, at the New England Conservatory and at Cologne State Conservatory. His period at the last of these was the result of a Fulbright Scholarship, followed by an award from the West German Government and a first prize in the conducting competition held in the Spanish town of Santiago.
For the Marco Polo label Stephen
Gunzenhauser has recorded works by Bloch, Lachner, Taneyev, Liadov, Glière and
Rubinstein, and for NAXOS Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.5, Beethoven's Overtures,
the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony, Orff's Carmina Burana and the
symphonies of Borodin. He is currently engaged in recording all the symphonies
and symphonic poems of Dvorak, also for NAXOS.
Capella Istropolitana
The Capella Istropolitana was founded in 1983 by members of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, at first as a chamber orchestra and then as an orchestra large enough to tackle the standard classical repertoire. Based in Bratislava, its name drawn from the ancient name still preserved in the Academia Istropolitana, the orchestra works in the recording studio and undertakes frequent tours throughout Europe. Recordings by the orchestra on the Naxos label include The Best of Baroque Music, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, fifteen each of Mozart's and Haydn's symphonies as well as works by Handel, Vivaldi and Telemann.
The Capella Istropolitana was founded in 1983 by members of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, at first as a chamber orchestra and then as an orchestra large enough to tackle the standard classical repertoire. Based in Bratislava, its name drawn from the ancient name still preserved in the Academia Istropolitana, the orchestra works in the recording studio and undertakes frequent tours throughout Europe. Recordings by the orchestra on the Naxos label include The Best of Baroque Music, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, fifteen each of Mozart's and Haydn's symphonies as well as works by Handel, Vivaldi and Telemann.
Disc 1
- Allegro - 10:09
- Andante cantabile - 07:50
- Rondeau: Andante grazioso - Allegro ma non troppo - 07:52
- Allegro maestoso - 13:39
- Andante - 10:59
- Presto - 06:42
Violin Concerto No. 4, D major, K. 218 (more info)
Performed by:
Capella Istropolitana
Composed by: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Conducted by: Stephen Gunzenhauser
Takako Nishizaki, violin
Recording date: 4-8 November 1989
Produced by: Sauer, Martin
Composed by: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Conducted by: Stephen Gunzenhauser
Takako Nishizaki, violin
Recording date: 4-8 November 1989
Produced by: Sauer, Martin
Sinfonia Concertante, E flat major, K. 364 (more info)
Performed by:
Capella Istropolitana
Composed by: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Conducted by: Stephen Gunzenhauser
Takako Nishizaki, violin
Ladislav Kyselak, viola
Recording date: 4-8 November 1989
Produced by: Sauer, Martin
Composed by: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Conducted by: Stephen Gunzenhauser
Takako Nishizaki, violin
Ladislav Kyselak, viola
Recording date: 4-8 November 1989
Produced by: Sauer, Martin
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Composer(s)/ Author(s):
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
Conductor(s):
Gunzenhauser, Stephen
Orchestra(s):
Capella Istropolitana
Artist(s):
Kyselak, Ladislav; Nishizaki, Takako
Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 730099533225
Item Number: 8550332
Release Date: Jan 1, 2001
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
Conductor(s):
Gunzenhauser, Stephen
Orchestra(s):
Capella Istropolitana
Artist(s):
Kyselak, Ladislav; Nishizaki, Takako
Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 730099533225
Item Number: 8550332
Release Date: Jan 1, 2001
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