Mozart's First and Last Symphony take center stage

Mozart’s first symphony charms, engages, and refreshes. Well-paced, well-written, and well-orchestrated, its lively outer movements flank a central Andante that’s cool as a cucumber. Steeped in the decorous galant style of the mid-18th century, it would have faded away long ago had it been composed by anybody else. And then there’s one more, tiny little thing. 

 Which is that Wolfgang Mozart was eight years old when he wrote it. 

 Eight. At a time when most kids are playing with the dog, going to school, getting into trouble, and making messes, Wolfgang was a concert veteran in a state of exponential creative growth. In April 1764 the Mozarts – Wolfgang, father Leopold, and sister Nannerl – arrived in London as part of a lengthy European tour. It was there that Wolfgang wrote his first symphony, at some time during August or September 1764. Nowadays there’s a memorial plaque on the house where he did it. 

 Mozart’s earliest symphonies can claim a matched pair of godfathers, both erstwhile students of the incomparable Johann Sebastian Bach and both resident in London at the time. The first was Carl Friedrich Abel, a virtuoso on the viola da gamba and a prolific writer of well-coiffed symphonies. The second was Abel’s business partner Johann Christian Bach, Sebastian’s youngest son and a skilled practitioner of the galant style. Both composers mentored Mozart, but Christian Bach seems to have had the most lasting influence. 

 As the musical embodiment of a cultural ideal that elevated etiquette as a prime civilizing force, the galant style might seem a bit twee to 21st century listeners. The trick is to listen with an ear attuned to the meticulous balance of moods and characters that is the very essence of galanterie. In Mozart’s opening Allegro molto every yin has its yan, every forte its piano, every rise its fall. Perhaps the elegant second-place Andante meanders a bit too much for its own good, but that’s OK. Mozart wasn’t a Great Composer yet. The effervescent concluding rondo trips the light fantastic as it alternates bouncy reprises with slightly less-bouncy episodes. All in all, a fine achievement for a composer of any age and a flabbergasting triumph for a little kid. Perhaps nobody could have anticipated the effulgent glory to come, but one thing was certain: Wolfgang Mozart was now a symphonist. 

The story of Sir Stephen Hough’s new piano concerto begins with the Industrial Revolution. Technological advancements in the early 19th century led to vastly improved roads and eventually railroads, both of which went far to ameliorate the nightmare that had been overland travel since the Middle Ages. Economic growth increased leisure time right along with incomes, so audiences flocked to the newfangled concert halls that were springing up everywhere. Steam power spurred the transformation of the lightly-strung fortepiano into the modern pianoforte, with its cast iron frame, massive heft, and auditorium-filling sonority.  

Ergo, conditions were ideal for the emergence of touring virtuoso pianists. They sprouted luxuriantly, barnstorming hither, thither, and yon along those new roads, all of them seeking fame and fortune as they played in all those new concert halls for all those new audiences. Of course most of them went bust. But some went the distance, thanks to a combination of talent, skill, guts, and just plain old luck. 

Unlike modern virtuosos, those early touring pianists were all composers who played mostly their own stuff. Some of them were very fine composers indeed; think Liszt, think Mendelssohn, think 20th-century exemplars Bartók and Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff. Others were hacks who churned out empty-calorie potpourris of hit opera tunes and the like, such as the guy whose comely wife accompanied him on the tambourine with her forearm bared, thereby attracting extra-large audiences of extra-attentive young men. Happily, we can ignore those mountebanks and focus instead on the great ones, those who had something to offer far beyond a blatant appeal for money. 

Sir Stephen evokes that grand old tradition of the composer-pianist, looking into the ‘world of yesterday’ when such was the norm and not the exception. His new concerto began as music for a potential film about an ageing Austrian baroness and a young American composer. The film went off in a different direction, so Hough wound up with a pile of musical sketches just waiting to be used. 

Sir Stephen tells us that his subtitle ‘the world of yesterday’ is “borrowed from Stefan Zweig’s eponymous memoir with its celebration of Viennese culture before the First World War: the world as it used to be; nostalgia both literal and legendary. But this title became a tag for me writing this piece, representing the history of the piano concerto form itself and of the pianists who wrote these works. A world of yesterday indeed.” 

There’s nothing in music history quite like Wolfgang Mozart’s letters to friends, colleagues, and above all his father Leopold. Exuberant and grumpy, confiding and evasive, often funny, sometimes merrily obscene, they open a window to the mind and heart of a dearly beloved artist. But after Leopold died in 1787 the former torrent of correspondence slowed to a trickle, then nearly dried up altogether in the summer of 1788, just when Mozart was composing a triptych of symphonies – 39, 40, and 41 – that would prove to be his last. So all we know for certain is that Wolfgang wrote all three within a span of two months, a compositional speed record if ever there were. Nor do we know why he wrote them, although he might have been planning a brief tour that didn’t pan out. 

Also murky is the how and why of the “Jupiter” nickname. It’s quite apt for a celebratory symphony that’s pervaded throughout with solemn dignity and noble optimism. (By the way, old-timey sob sisters used to bleat about this being Mozart’s ‘farewell to the symphony.’ No, it isn’t. Mozart was 32 years old when he wrote it, he was in perfectly good health, and healthy guys in their early thirties aren’t known for writing farewells to anything.) 

Festive C major symphonies such as the Jupiter, all ablaze with trumpets and drums, constitute a lively sub-genre of the Classical repertory. The Jupiter’s opening statement banishes any hint of the old galant style, as three trumpet-and-drum fanfares kick off a lavish parade of themes, textures, and moods. All is not necessarily Olympian. Mozart tosses in a cute little bunny-rabbit tune that he had written as an ‘insertion aria’ for Pasquale Anfossi’s recent comic opera Le gelosie fortunate. 

For his second movement, Mozart resuscitates the sarabande, that most elegant and dignified of the stylized dances of the Baroque era. Its fine aristocratic phrases give way to a middle section of minor-mode drama, as the upper voices slither while the accompaniment churns. Of course patrician punctilio is eventually re-established. Noblesse oblige, after all.  

The third movement might be cast in orthodox Minuet & Trio form, but otherwise it’s far removed from your basic well-mannered minuet. It darts about; it bursts into fits of heroism; it skirts the edges of ominous minor keys; it tacks on oddball extra phrases. A bit of a tomboy minuet, in other words. Only during its diminutive Trio does it take on the demure composure of its more genteel brethren. 

 And then, the fourth movement. Symphonic finales had already grown well beyond the brief frolics of early Viennese Classicism, but (to borrow a Silicon Valley catchphrase) this one was a game-changer. Mozart’s intensive study of Baroque counterpoint paid off in a dazzling tour de force that seamlessly blends follow-the-leader fugal procedures with standard sonata form. Although short fugues pop out repeatedly throughout the movement, Mozart withholds his biggest surprise for the very end: he lines up all of the movement’s melodies and, as it were with a flick of a finger, sets them charging down a steeplechase, all galloping pell-mell to a riotously thrilling close.