2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings
(Mozart added the flutes and clarinets later.)

Allegro con spirito
Andante
Menuetto
Finale: Presto

Program Notes by Martin Pearlman

In July of 1782, Leopold Mozart sent his son a letter asking him to write a new symphony for their friend Sigmund Haffner, a wealthy Salzburg merchant and burgomeister.  Some years earlier, Wolfgang had composed his Haffner Serenade for the wedding of Sigmund's daughter.  Now Haffner's son, also named Sigmund, was to receive a title of nobility, and a new symphony was to be played at the celebration. 

In a famous letter, Mozart replied to his father's request:  "Well, I am up to my eyes in work, for by Sunday week I have to arrange my opera [The Abduction from the Seraglio] for wind instruments . . . And now you ask me to write a new symphony!  How on earth can I do so? . . . Well, I must just spend the night over it, for that is the only way; and to you, dearest father, I sacrifice it.  You may rely on having something from me by every post.  I shall work as fast as possible and, as far as haste permits, I shall turn out good work."

The symphony was completed and the last parts of it shipped off by early August, a time when Mozart was not only busy arranging his opera, but was also occupied with preparations for his own wedding on August 4.  He did not see the score again, until his father returned it to him some months later, so that he could use it in one of his concerts in Vienna.  "My new Haffner symphony has positively amazed me," he wrote, "for I had forgotten every single note of it.  It must surely produce a good effect."

In its original form, the work resembled more a serenade than the typical four-movement symphony.  In addition to the movements that we now have, it began with an introductory march (K. 385a) and had a second minuet and trio (now lost).  Mozart deleted both these movements and added flutes and clarinets to the outer movements when he prepared the symphony for a public concert of his music.  That concert took place in Vienna on March 23, 1783, and the program split the symphony, using it as a kind of "sandwich" to unify the concert.  It began with the first three movements of the symphony, followed by a variety of works, including piano concertos and piano solos played by Mozart himself, as well as vocal works, and it ended with the finale of the symphony.  Splitting the symphony in this way might well offend our modern sense about the integrity of a multi-movement work; we expect to hear a piece from beginning to end.  But it was not uncommon for composers such as Mozart and Haydn to perform these operations on their own symphonies, using them as bookends to unify an entire program.  Mozart's program and his new symphony were a resounding success with the public, with critics, and with the emperor, who, contrary to his usual custom, stayed for the entire concert.

Boston Baroque Performances

Symphony No. 35 ("Haffner"), K. 385

May 7 & 8, 2010
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor

March 6, 1992
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor

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