The Timeless Music

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S WEET S ERENADE
THE TIMELESS MUSIC OF MOZART
“O Mozart, immortal Mozart, how many, how
infinitely many inspiring suggestions of a finer,
better life have you left in our souls!”
– F RANZ S CHUBERT
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-1791
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Soave sia il vento (Gentle be the breeze) from Così fan tutte, KV588
Amanda Thane soprano, Fiona Janes mezzo-soprano, David Brennan baritone,
The Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, Carlo Rizzi conductor
2’43
2
Adagio from Clarinet Concerto in A major, KV622
Donald Westlake clarinet, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Robert Pikler conductor
7’33
3
Romance (Andante) from Serenade in G major, KV525 ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik’
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Geoffrey Lancaster conductor
4’21
4
Deh, vieni alla finestra (Oh, come to the window – Serenade)
from Don Giovanni, KV527
2’31
Teddy Tahu Rhodes baritone, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Ola Rudner conductor
5
Adagio from Serenade in B-flat major, KV361 ‘Gran Partita’,
arr. Christian Gottlieb Schwenke
Diana Doherty oboe, Sinfonia Australis Ensemble
5’04
Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben (Rest gently, my sweet love)
from Zaide, KV344
Shu-Cheen Yu soprano, The Queensland Orchestra, Brett Kelly conductor
6’01
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2
7
Andante from Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, KV467 ‘Elvira Madigan’
6’59
Vera Kameneva piano, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Christopher Hogwood conductor
8
Bei Männern, die Liebe fühlen (In men who feel love) from Die Zauberflöte
(The Magic Flute), KV620
3’13
Isobel Buchanan soprano, John Pringle baritone, Queensland Symphony Orchestra,
Richard Bonynge conductor
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Larghetto from Clarinet Quintet in A major, KV581, arranged for string quintet
The Australia Ensemble (Dene Olding, Dimity Hall violins, Irena Morozov,
Hartmut Lindemann violas, Julian Smiles cello)
3
7’05
0
Lacrimosa from Requiem, KV626
Sydney Philharmonia Symphonic Choir, Sydney Philharmonia Orchestra,
Antony Walker conductor
!
Andante from Divertimento in D major, KV136, arranged for guitar quartet
by Timothy Kain
Guitar Trek (Timothy Kain, Fiona Walsh, Richard Strasser, Peter Constant guitars)
3’21
4’27
@
Larghetto from Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat major, KV595
Imogen Cooper piano, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Richard Tognetti director
7’19
£
Ave verum Corpus, KV618
Sydney Philharmonia Motet Choir, Sydney Philharmonia Orchestra,
Antony Walker conductor
3’27
$
Serenade (Deh, vieni alla finestra) from Don Giovanni, KV527, transcribed for
piano solo by Wilhelm Backhaus
Dennis Hennig piano
4’14
%
O Isis und Osiris from Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), KV620
Conal Coad bass, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Dobbs Franks conductor
3’06
^
Fantasia in D minor, KV397
John Champ piano
5’23
Total Playing Time
76’52
strangely ambiguous one – a bittersweet farce
of disguised lovers attempting to woo their
fiancées into betrayal and almost succeeding.
Mozart responded to the complexities of plot
and characterisation with an equally intricate and
“symphonic” score. In the poignant ensemble
Soave sia il vento from Act I, Fiordiligi and
Dorabella (with the cynical Don Alfonso) bid
farewell to their lovers who they believe are
going to war: “May the wind be gentle, may the
waves be calm, and may all the elements be
kind and grant our desires.”
When we talk about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
we usually have to resort to words like “genius”
and “prodigy”, we evoke the divine, we wonder
at the slightly childish sense of humour revealed
in letters to his family and friends – the
supremely gifted musician with a child’s soul
who died a pauper and was buried in a forgotten
grave. Our understanding of Mozart is coloured
by 200 years of misunderstanding and myth.
Mozart was indeed a prodigy, composing simple
symphonies at eight, but these give very little
indication of the genius he was to become, for
he matured slowly, composing his best work in
the last decade of his life. He was thoughtful
and painstaking, revising often (hardly “taking
dictation from God”, as Salieri complains in Peter
Shaffer’s play Amadeus), revisiting operas and
improving them after their premieres. He was
also very successful: he had several hit operas,
and earned more than any other composer in
Europe. In his own time, Mozart was renowned
as a towering genius. When he at last grew
into his gift, Mozart produced music of
unprecedented formal, harmonic and melodic
perfection. Taking the familiar forms of the
Classical tradition (symphony, concerto, opera),
Mozart discovered rich new possibilities for
human expression, making music that is both of
its time and timeless.
The clarinet is the Mozartian instrument par
excellence. With its vocal colour, its ability to
move from opera buffa high spirits to soaring
beauty, it’s no wonder that Mozart composed
one of his finest concertos for the clarinet (and
its great exponent Anton Stadler). The second
movement Adagio is a quasi-operatic aria that
showcases the clarinet’s dusky voice to
stunning effect.
Mozart would be rather surprised to learn that
works such as his serenades Eine kleine
Nachtmusik and the Gran Partita are still being
enjoyed and given serious attention today. For
him, these works were essentially disposable
occasional pieces written as background music
for elegant parties. The Romance contrasts a
blithe opening motif with a more urgent minor
key episode – a hint that Mozart interrupted
composing the dark Don Giovanni to write it.
The late gem Così fan tutte (Women are like
that) vies with The Marriage of Figaro for the
title of Mozart’s greatest comedy, but it is a
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As blackly funny as it is dramatic, Mozart’s
potent masterpiece Don Giovanni (or The Rake
Punished) was a sensation from its first
performance in Prague in 1787. And no wonder:
in addition to a racy plot, Don Giovanni contains
some of Mozart’s most brilliant and compelling
music. In Deh, vieni alla finestra, the
eponymous anti-hero serenades the maid of his
enemy, Elvira (one of many whom the Don has
loved and left), accompanying his honeyed
words with his mandolin: “Oh, come to your
window, my darling... If you deny me all solace, I
shall die here before your eyes.”
Leben which the virtuous heroine, imprisoned in
a harem, sings to a slave: “Rest gently, my dear
one, sleep till your happiness awakens.” The
slave falls in love with her and vows to liberate
her. And since 18th-century operas of this sort
always ended happily ever after, we can assume
that they get their freedom.
The Gran Partita for 13 winds (and grand it is,
lasting longer than any of Mozart’s symphonies),
is justly famous for the serene third movement
Adagio. This is the music that underscores the
moment in Milos Forman’s film Amadeus where
Salieri apprehends Mozart’s genius for the first
time. In the Adagio, a moment of serene beauty
is achieved through the simplest of means: a
melody is passed from instrument to instrument
over a gently pulsing background. In this
arrangement by Schwenke, Diana Doherty’s
oboe is given the starring role.
Mozart completed his Piano Concerto No. 21 on
9 March 1785, just in time for its premiere the
next day. After moving to Vienna in the early
1780s Mozart made a nice living as a concert
pianist, composing a string of great concertos to
showcase his virtuosity. The second movement
Andante’s atmosphere of dreamy lyricism is
ushered in by the muted strings’ broad
statement of the melody over murmuring
triplets. The piano then elaborates and
embellishes the theme, weaving its sound into
the texture of the orchestra in a striking
departure from the usual Classical alternation of
soloist and orchestra. This movement was used
extensively in the 1967 Swedish film Elvira
Madigan, where it struck such a chord with
moviegoers that the concerto has been known
by that nickname ever since.
The opera Zaide exists as a tantalising fragment
that looks forward to themes explored in The
Abduction from the Seraglio. The 23-year-old
Mozart composed 15 or so numbers for the
exotic Singspiel (musical comedy), the best
known of which is Ruhe sanft, mein holdes
The Magic Flute is Mozart’s truest musical selfportrait. In it he gave free reign not only to his
fertile and occasionally whimsical musical
imagination, and his at times juvenile sense of
humour, but also to his optimistic vision of a
world united in brotherly (and conjugal) love.
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“Mozart tapped...the source from which all music
flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and
refinement and breath-taking rightness that has
never since been duplicated.”
– A ARON C OPLAND
7
Pamina and Papageno’s Act I duet Bei Männern,
die Liebe fühlen celebrates just such a union
with music as “artless” and unforgettable as a
folksong: “In men who feel love, a good heart,
too, is never lacking. Sharing these sweet urges
is then women’s duty. We want to enjoy love; it
is through love alone that we live...There is
nothing nobler than woman and man.”
Divertimento in D major, KV136 when he was
16, about the time when he started to produce
his first mature masterpieces. Originally for
string quartet, the Divertimento was one of
three he composed in Salzburg in 1772. In an
arrangement for the guitar quartet Guitar Trek,
the Italianate character of the lilting 3/4-time
Andante is brought to the fore.
It wasn’t uncommon in Mozart’s day for
composers and publishers to arrange and adapt
works for other combinations of instruments to
bring their works to a wider public, especially
when the original versions demanded the skills
of a virtuoso clarinettist, as Mozart’s Clarinet
Quintet does. The Larghetto loses none of its
soulful grace in translation to string quintet.
The Piano Concerto No. 27 was sketched in
1788 but not completed and performed until the
final year of Mozart’s life, 1791, earning the work
a somewhat valedictory reputation. The concerto
is transparently scored, almost like a chamber
work, and the interplay between piano and
orchestra in the sentimental but never cloying
Larghetto is particularly felicitous.
There is an aura of tragic legend surrounding
Mozart’s Requiem, his final work. Mozart,
suffering from the last stages of what was
probably rheumatic fever, became convinced
that he had been poisoned and that the
Requiem, commissioned by an anonymous
patron, would be his own. The Lacrimosa’s
eloquent choral dissonances and the dramatic
sighs of the strings evoke the mournful Day of
Judgment, eventually taking on a quietly
pleading quality as the text begs God for mercy.
Mozart’s Ave verum Corpus demonstrates best
Artur Schnabel’s dictum that Mozart’s music is
“too simple for children but too difficult for
adults”. The 46 bars of this piece are easy
enough for a school choir to sing yet they
achieve a degree of sincerity and candour that
remains unsurpassed. In its three and a half
minutes, Ave verum Corpus demonstrates
Mozart’s timeless mastery.
Until the recording era, most people’s first
encounter with classical music was through the
medium of the piano, either in their own homes
or on the concert stage. Touring pianists would
arrange popular arias, instrumental works and
Divertimento is Italian for “diversion”, a more
sophisticated version of what today we might
call wallpaper music. Mozart composed his
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shifts of mood – mysterious, soulful, anxious –
compress a universe of expression into a tiny
space. The Fantasia ends with music that is a
summa of Mozart’s art: an allegretto that is, in
Alfred Einstein’s words, both “naïve and celestial”.
even symphonies for recital performance.
Virtuoso Wilhelm Backhaus, noted as one of the
early 20th century’s great exponents of
Beethoven, made a virtuoso arrangement of
Mozart’s Deh, vieni alla finestra for such
occasions and for the entertainment of
talented amateurs.
Robert Murray
The beginning of the second act of The Magic
Flute sees our hero and heroine separated,
awaiting trials of initiation, rituals inspired by
Mozart’s involvement with the Masonic Order,
then an influential “secret” society that included
many of the Austrian intelligentsia. The Magic
Flute abounds in Masonic symbolism, including
its vaguely Egyptian setting. The high priest,
Sarastro (a slightly menacing and ambiguous
figure), sings the solemnly beautiful hymn-like
aria O Isis and Osiris, asking the gods to help
the young couple through their trials.
While 21st-century classical musicians have
been trained to scrupulously reproduce exactly
what the composer has written, 18th-century
musicians had no qualms about departing
radically from the score or even making music
up on the spot. According to Mozart scholar
Robert Levin, Mozart’s contemporaries held his
skills as an improviser in even higher regard than
his skills as a composer. Today we get only a
hint of his spontaneous genius via works such
as the Fantasia in D minor KV397. Mercurial
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Executive Producers Robert Patterson, Lyle Chan
Mastering Thomas Grubb
Editorial and Production Manager Natalie Shea
Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd
Cover Photo © APL/Cindy Kassab
This compilation 2006 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
2006 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Distributed
in Australia by Universal Music Group, under exclusive licence.
Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of copyright reserved.
Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or
broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright
owner is prohibited.
“Whether the angels play only Bach praising
God, I am not quite sure. I am sure,
however, that en famille they play Mozart.”
– K ARL B ARTH (1886-1968),
S WISS THEOLOGIAN
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