Program Book

Saturday, March 25, 2023 at 8PM at Calderwood Studio at GBH, Boston, MA
Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 3PM at Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory, Boston, MA

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> Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
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Boston Baroque
Martin Pearlman, Music Director

Martin Pearlman, conductor

This weekend's Sinfonia concertante performances are sponsored by Dr. Robert Petersen and The Petersen Family in loving memory of Dr. Veronica Petersen, a longtime member of Boston Baroque's Board of Directors and Advisory Council.

Program Notes
by Martin Pearlman

Symphony in D Major, K. 196 + 121

This symphony, with its odd double Köchel number, is a relatively early and rarely heard work that does not appear in the normal list of Mozart's forty-one symphonies.  In 1775, just before his nineteenth birthday, Mozart's opera, La finta giardiniera was given its premiere in Munich.  Its overture consisted of two short movements, a bright fast one evidently designed to wake up the audience, and then a slower cantabile movement to lead into the opening act of a comic love story.  

Sometime later, probably within the year, Mozart decided to compose an equally brief finale to add onto this two-part overture, so that he would have a three-movement symphony to present when needed.  The opera itself is listed among his works as K. 196, but the new finale was given a separate number, 121; hence the double K. number.

The resulting symphony comes from a different world than the complexity and depth of Mozart's late symphonies written in Vienna.  It comes from his time in Salzburg when symphonies still tended to be relatively simple entertainments.  This one retains something of the feel of the original overture, and although we do not know whether Mozart ever performed it, it could well have provided him with a short, bright opening to a concert.

Sinfonia concertante in E-flat for violin, viola, and orchestra, K. 364

In the two-year period 1778-79, following his return home from a tour that included visits to Paris and Mannheim, Mozart worked on a series of concertos for multiple soloists.  In both Paris and Mannheim, the multiple concerto, or sinfonia concertante, was extremely popular, and Mozart was greatly influenced by what he heard.  His ouput in those years included not only the present work for violin and viola, but a sinfonia concertante for four wind instruments, the concerto for flute and harp, the concerto for two pianos, as well as two incomplete concertos—one for piano and violin and one for violin, viola and cello.  Numerous details in this Sinfonia Concertante show the influence of his experiences on his tour.  The dotted rhythm of the opening bars, as well as the orchestral crescendo at the end of the introduction, to name just two, were both common features of music at Mannheim.

Only fragments of this concerto for violin and viola survive in Mozart's hand.  We know the work today principally from the first edition, which appeared ten years after his death, but the manuscript fragments do tell us that the cadenzas are Mozart's own. 

One fascinating feature of this work is the way that Mozart balances the bright sound of the violin with the darker sound of the viola.  He has the solo viola tune a half step higher than normal, so that, while everyone else is playing the piece in its true key, E-flat major, the viola soloist is reading and fingering the piece in D major.  The effect is to make the viola sound more brilliant, both because of the increased tension on its strings and because, unlike the violin, its open strings are resonating in the key of the piece.  Although the work is often played today with a viola in the conventional tuning, Mozart's higher tuning can create a unique and fascinating balance between the two solo instruments.

Symphony No. 41 in C Major ("Jupiter"), K. 551

Mozart's last symphony, the "Jupiter", was completed on August 10, 1788.  It was a difficult time for Mozart.  His public career and personal finances were faltering, and he had only recently suffered the death of a baby daughter.  Nonetheless, it was an unusually productive year for his composing, and he was able to add thirty new entries into his catalogue of works.  Don Giovanni, composed the previous year, received its second production in Vienna in May of 1788, and in June he began work on his famous final trilogy of symphonies, of which the "Jupiter" is the third, completing them all in less than two months. 

The name "Jupiter," was attached to this work after Mozart's death most likely by Johann Peter Salomon, the English impresario who had commissioned Haydn's last twelve symphonies.  From its very opening, the symphony has the weighty sonority and character that set it apart from most other symphonies by Mozart or his contemporaries.  The first movement opens with three powerful strokes of an octave "C" followed immediately by a gentle sighing figure, and it is between these two poles that the material of the movement unfolds.  There follows a slow movement with muted strings, which, as its andante cantabile marking suggests, flows throughout with a gentle forward motion.  The third movement is a dance, a Menuetto with a trio that begins with two chords that sound like a final cadence.  Both these middle movements are extraordinary, but it is the finale that is most famous.  

In German-speaking countries, this work was long known as "the symphony with the fugal ending;" and, while the entire symphony is brilliant—or, as Schumann put it, "wholly above discussion"—it is indeed the unprecedented finale that is most dazzling.  The four-note motive C-D-F-E which begins that last movement not only appears in a number of other works by Mozart but had long been common property for composers of counterpoint.  But this little motive is only one of five that Mozart treats in fugue and canon in the course of this sonata-form movement.  The culmination comes in the coda, where all five of these motives are heard simultaneously in an intricate web of counterpoint that is  brought to a close in a flourish of brass and timpani.  Here we have a finale that is the climax of the entire work, rather than the lighthearted ending that is so common in earlier symphonies.  The feeling of seriousness and weight in this symphony was no doubt one reason why the "Jupiter" remained so popular in the nineteenth century, taking a revered place alongside the symphonies of Beethoven.

Boston Baroque Orchestra

VIOLIN I
Christina Day Martinson, concertmaster
Jesse Irons, assistant concertmaster
Danielle Maddon
Julia McKenzie
Rebecca Nelson
Jane Starkman
Amy Sims

VIOLIN II
Megumi Stohs Lewis*
Lena Wong
Laura Gulley
Francis Liu
Emily Dahl
Etsuko Ishizuka

VIOLA
Jason Fisher*
Barbara Wright
Lauren Nelson
Susan Fiore
Emily Rideout

CELLO
Cullen Coty O’Neil*
Velleda Miragias
Jacques Lee Wood
Thomas Barth

VIOLONE
Motomi Igarashi*
Andrew Arceci

FLUTE
Bethanne Walker*

OBOE
Alison Gangler*
Owen Watkins

BASSOON
Stephanie Corwin*
Allen Hamrick

TRUMPET
Thomas Pfotenhauer*
Jesse Levine

HORN
Nate Udell*
Robert Marlatt

TIMPANI
Robert Schulz*

*Principal

The orchestra performs on period instruments.

Livestream Director
Matthew Principe