Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219
For solo violin with 2 oboes, 2 horns, and strings
Allegro aperto
Adagio
Rondo: Tempo di minuetto-Allegro-Tempo di minuetto
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
Like Mozart's other violin concertos, this is an early work. It dates from December of 1775, when the composer was nineteen years old. Who it was written for is not known, but it is possible that, among others, Mozart himself may have played it, since he was said to be an accomplished violinist.
The work has several strikingly original ideas that are not found in his earlier concertos. For one, the work begins with an Allegro orchestral introduction, but then the violin enters with an Adagio of only six bars before resuming the Allegro. It is a beautiful and unexpected touch.
It is the third movement that gives this concerto its nickname, the "Turkish Concerto." In the middle of a graceful minuet movement, the music suddenly switches to an Allegro in the minor mode, and the meter changes from 3/4 to 2/4, as the violin and orchestra take up what is meant to suggest wild Turkish music. Turkish culture enjoyed a considerable fashion in eighteenth-century Europe with Turkish coffee, Turkish subjects in dramas and paintings, popular stories about Turkey in many operas, and many rulers creating janissary bands for their armies. Those janissary bands included not only loud wind instruments (e.g. fifes and shawms) but also "exotic" percussion (cymbals, triangles, and various drums), effects that many European composers imitated for special effects.
Mozart famously wrote "Turkish" music in parts of his opera The Abduction from the Seraglio and in the well known Alla Turca that ends one of his piano sonatas. Here, in this violin concerto, he has no percussion or outdoor wind instruments in the orchestra, but he imitates the effect with strong accents, exotic chromatic scales with sudden crescendos, and a percussive drone of the cellos and basses striking their strings with the stick of the bow (col legno). Following this unruly middle section, the music returns to its graceful minuet.
Boston Baroque Performances
Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219
October 5, 1979
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloist:
Daniel Stepner, violin