A recent Harmonia Mundi recording (January '25) by the Munich Chamber Orchestra conducted by Enrico Onofri of the Haffner and Posthorn Serenades invites a closer study of Mozart's galant and festive music.
First performed in 1776 the Haffner Serenade (K. 250) is believed to have been composed for the wedding of Elizabeth Haffner, daughter of the wealthy Salzburg businessman Sigismund Haffner. The biggest serenade ever composed by Mozart, as a whole it leans towards an open-air style, and as such is ideal garden-music.' [1] 'The scale and character of the Haffner's maestoso opening makes clear Mozart's view of the grandeur of the occasion: this is the weightiest and most symphonic of Mozart's occasional works'. [2]. The Haffner's two minuets and rondeau are also exemplary of its composer's fondness for dancing.
'A quick summary of the Haffner Serenades 8 movements might run: '(1) rather grand ; (2) a mellifluous Andante with solo violin, suitable for thoughts of marital bliss; (3) a quasi-staunch Minuet with some yearning stretches, much solo violin, and a folksy trio heavy on the horns; (4) a dashing Rondo with solo violin fiddling madly; (5) a syndromatic Menuetto galante; (6) a lilting and lyrical Andante; (7) another Minuet, this one a hearty folk dance with drones here and there and hunting horns in the trio; (8) a long and solemnly beautiful introduction for a dashing and droll Allegro assai finale with episodes of mock-furioso' [3]
Couched within the Haffner Serenade (mov. 2-4) there's a three movement violin concerto, 'a lithe, sparkling tour de force both of composition and execution', [4] which as Swafford notes, intimates conjugal harmony and bliss. Soloist Isabelle Faust has also recorded Mozart's complete Violin Concertos for Harmonia Mundi, reviewed later.
Mozart composed the last of his Salzburg Serenades in 1779. Celebrating the end of the University academic year, the Posthorn Serenade in D major, K. 250 acquired its nickname for featuring a post horn, an instrument more usually heard announcing the arrival of the mail rider or coach. The Posthorn's first movement is close to a sustained fanfare, with festal horns, trumpets and timpani. A surprising and unusual element in this serenade is the inclusion of a lengthy, dark-toned Andantino, its sombre air in keeping with Mozart's characteristic D minor mood which reminds the listener that not all is sweetness and light in this world.
Harmonia Mundi's release of Mozart's Serenades also includes Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in G major, K. 525. Its opening theme is refreshingly performed not as so often in a strident and assertive manner, but with subtle dynamics. The fourth and final movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A little Night music) has been the signature theme of the Radio 4 quiz 'Brain of Britain' since 1953.
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A Harmonia Mundi recording of Mozart's violin concertos by Il Giardio Armonica (The Garden of Harmony) who play 17th/18th-century music on antique instruments, led by Giovanni Antonini and accompanied by soloist Isabelle Faust, reveals new subtleties to what is some of the sweetest and most charming music composed by Mozart in his late teens.
Isabelle Faust's playing throughout these violin concertos is precise, delicately revealing layers of emotion and meaning which might otherwise remain hidden or overlooked by other soloists. In a performing career spanning decades, Faust first came to prominence as a violinist in 1997 when she won the Gramophone Award for "Young Artist of the Year" for her first CD recording of the Sonata for Solo Violin and the Violin Sonata No. 1 of Béla Bartók on Harmonia Mundi.
In many ways Mozart's five violin concertos utilize and outgrow the confines of the style known as Galant to form music in the relatively new Classical style. In contrast to the complexity, religious piety and cosmic awe of much Baroque music Galant music itself was simpler, light-hearted and urbane, and a significant step in the secularization of music during the 18th century.
An early example of Galant music can be heard in Jean-Philippe Rameau's opera-ballet Le Indies Galantes (1735-1736) which is considered to be a quintessential example of the galant style in French Baroque music. Showcasing exoticism, sensuality in particular plays a significant role in Le Indies Galantes. Rameau's music evokes seductive beauty, reflecting the opera-ballet's themes of love, desire, and exoticism.
The musicologist Jan Swafford states of the Adagio of Mozart's Violin Concerto no. 3 in G major, K. 216 -
'For the second movement, the oboes switch to flutes and the strings put on mutes, helping to paint another of Mozart's exquisite misty nocturnes, the violin singing long, beautiful, aria-like melodies. The orchestra part is lavishly developed, supporting the solo with gently throbbing textures'. [5]
True to the archetype of Aquarius, Mozart liked to surprise and even shock his listener. In the last movement of Violin concerto no. 5 in A major, K. 219, considered to be the most dramatic of his five Violin concertos, Mozart surprises his listener, not only introducing a rolling, chromatic theme, evocative of sea-sickness, but also with a vigorous alla Turk theme which takes on a resolute military mood (at 3:31 in Youtube clip below).
Collectively Mozart's Violin Concertos reveal his early mastery of form and structure, along with an uncanny ability to balance tradition with innovation. Jan Swafford succinctly summarizes their place in Western Orchestral music thus-
'We are arriving at the mature eighteenth century concerto, in which the soloist is the leading character and the orchestra is the world he or she lives in, and their relations are intricate. Mozart could always coast on his incomparable gift as a tunesmith, but now he is thinking more about how themes (and non thematical matter as well) function in the architecture of the movement as a whole. Each moment of a movement announces clearly to the listener what it is doing in the form: here is a theme, here is a transition, here is the retransition to the recapitulation. There you have the achievement of the late eighteenth-century, musical syntax on the small scale adding up to architecture on the large scale. The pattern was consistent, well understood by connoisseurs, yet infinitely flexible. This predictability underlying predictability in sonata form, its effectiveness in organizing material no matter how variegated, created a formal model that stayed around for much of the next two centuries.' [6]
See also -
Mozart's last three symphonies
Notes and Bibliography
