Most of us who sing in choirs know and love Mozart’s Requiem (which he never finished), and his Mass in C minor (not finished either), but the summit of his musical achievements otherwise lies in the operas and piano concertos.  I can’t really take on the operas other than to give a personal assessment here of Mozart’s achievement.  Mozart is at the very top and a composer of the ‘first water’ (I have always liked that expression going back to watching silly comedies acted and spoken by the likes of Terry-Thomas being an old-fashioned upper-class twit.  I looked up its original meaning a long time ago and was quite surprised.  Well go on then!).

Early opera tended to be based on Classical dramas and were dramatically stiff.  They became a vehicle for accomplished singers to show off their abilities at the expense of the action.  In England Handel’s operas fell out of favour.  They were sung in Italian which almost no one understood, and contained lengthy recitative and ‘da capo’ arias.  These arias come in three sections (da capo = go back to the beginning and start all over again), the third being the repeat of the first but in which the singers would insert their own extensive embellishments.  ‘He was despised’ from Messiah is in da capo form and after the dotted middle section one restarts a rather lengthy process – did I hear the orchestra groan?  The problem is that, very fine as it is, Handel wrote ‘Largo’ at the beginning for good reason. When The Beggars Opera and works like it came along, it knocked Handel off his pedestal, and at that point he turned to writing oratorio in English, based on similar forms but with less recitative, more choruses and fewer da capo arias.  Messiah to this day seems to be the most popular oratorio in the entire repertoire, somewhat to the neglect of others such as Samson, Saul, Jephtha and Israel in Egypt. 

Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck set about reforming opera in the 18th century, and got some of the way.  He reduced the da capo aria, secco recitative (secco = dry with just keyboard accompaniment) and aimed for a more syllabic and simple setting of the text.  He also slowly moved away from the castrato voice!  The subject matters were still based on classical drama – Orpheus, Iphigénie en Tauride etc.  Mozart was 42 years his junior, but died only 4 years after Gluck.

Mozart came bursting onto the operatic scene and from the beginning was far more successful at bringing his characters alive, even in the serious works such as Idomeneo. Some of the plots appear on the surface to be little more than ‘Whitehall farces’, especially Cosi fan tutte, but Mozart’s achievements, even when people were dressing up as others or hiding in wardrobes, was to penetrate deeply into the human soul and condition, and this humanity shines through.  His characters were alive and the audience could see their own lives reflected in them.  The wealth of vocal ensembles brought out each distinctive character with hilarity and sympathy somehow combined, and contained some of the most dramatically defining moments in all opera – the appearance of the Commendatore in Don Giovanni perhaps being the most outstanding and impressive.  With that he flooded his operas with his best music, tender, touching and unsurpassed.

A small diversion – I have had a couple of Damascene moments in my musical life, and did not connect with Mozart until I was 22.  It seemed refined, ‘nice’ and quite pretty, but I didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about…..until I bought a hugely discounted box set (LPs) of The Marriage of Figaro and was listening to the final half-hour.  The penny dropped - I was blown away and after that appreciated all Mozart in an entirely new light.
Another diversion which I have mentioned and partially explained in the edited email to my Swedish singing friends:  The Swedish title for The Marriage of Figaro is Figaros Bröllop (pronounced Brerlopp…two short syllables, like dollop, for example).  I think they now understand why this may raise a smile in English-speaking countries.

With those operatic thoughts I am going to talk briefly about piano concertos, and one in particular:

Mozart Piano Concerto No 18 in B flat, K.456

There are 27 piano concertos listed, but the really great ones really begin from about No.17. No.9 in E flat and No. 14 in A are also worth hearing.  I have selected K.456 because I knew all the others from No. 17 to 27, and 9 and 14, before this one.  It was worth waiting for because it is as fine as all the rest, and they are all great works to listen to and get to know. 

As with his operas, Mozart effectively created the form of the piano concerto 1st movements and it served as a template for the later works of Beethoven and Brahms. The detail is not important and would come over as tediously technical for the purpose of this introduction, but Mozart successfully combined the essence of sonata form with ritornello (‘returning’ – to repeating earlier sections) form. This general structure applied to all Mozart’s later piano concertos, including this one in B flat major. 

In the first movements, the orchestra begins and lays out most of the main musical ideas, starting and ending in the tonic key and not changing key by the end of the first group as in normal sonata form. Mozart will certainly have dipped in and out of other keys along the way without them becoming established. (Only rarely is the piano involved at all in the opening section, Concerto No. 9 being the most significant exception.) Mozart would then re-introduce and embellish the same themes with the piano solo the predominant instrument, and occasionally introduce at least one more theme. This section would end as in sonata form, having changed to a related key.
The movement would then progress through the Development section, and then a Recapitulation which would be an amalgamation of the opening orchestral introduction and the first solo section with piano and orchestra together.
This all seems rather dry and uninteresting, so listen to the first movement and the sumptuous wealth of Mozart’s invention (Neapolitan 6th ‘n all).  His bag of tricks include rhythmic surprises, ingenious and unexpected harmonic alterations for simple themes (he knew his Bach), and engaging effects such as the long sustained ‘pedal note’ which accompanies the fourth idea (or third, depending on which way you look at it) of the opening orchestral section, something he used to great effect in his operas, especially to enhance your sympathetic thoughts for a vulnerable character.   Even by Mozart’s supreme standards this is a real gem of a movement and at times tantalising.  I can see Mozart in the play Amadeus playing it to Salieri with a smirk on his face, and Salieri quoting the lines from Butch Cassidy “How can he do that?  I couldn’t do that - could you do that?  I couldn’t do that”.   Nor could or did anyone else.

Just a quick note about cadenzas at the end of the first movements – these are opportunities for the soloist to display some virtuosity (and hark back to opera customs).  It’s more than that with Mozart (and his illustrious successors) because he could not be less than extraordinarily inventive – it just wasn’t in his DNA.  Cadenzas always begin in the same way, halting on a 2nd inversion chord of the tonic, so in this concerto it means a chord of B flat major with the 5th (F) at the bottom and the other two notes, (D and B flat) above it.  The cadenza is then played, ending on a dominant chord in root position, followed by the tonic chord in root position, on which the orchestra comes in to play the final few bars.  If you remove the cadenza altogether the three chords (the last one before the cadenza start and then the dominant and tonic chord), join to make complete harmonic sense and what in Grade ?4 Theory we learnt to call a Perfect Cadence.  That is the structural direction for ending the movement.

The 2nd Movement takes the form of a Theme and Five Variations.  I hardly know where to begin but again the invention and imagination is breathtaking.  The main theme is in two halves, each one repeated, and introduced entirely by the orchestra.  Then the piano enters and as each variation occurs it weaves its magic around all that is going on and develops into a high drama worthy of Don Giovanni.  It’s not menacing but there is some element of Schubertian darkness in the 3rd variation.  Suddenly then the sun comes out and we are treated to a 4th variation in the major key. The 5th and final variation returns to the minor key and there follows 26 bars of finishing off (coda).

I have not mentioned this before, but one of the outstanding features of all Mozart’s later piano concertos is the greatly-enhanced role of the woodwind instruments.  This transformed the orchestral quality and provided a quickly-changing sound which surpassed earlier compositions, including his own symphonies.  I would advise a listen just thinking about that – it’s quite revealing, and this concerto bursts with orchestral colour.

The final movement (there were only ever three – the minuet and trio idea did not really fit this combination) takes the form of a Rondo.  It’s too naïvely simple just to say that because within that rondo is yet another huge bag of goodies.  Rondo form simply comes ‘round’ and the opening section returns twice more in the home key, and in this concerto it is separated by two ‘episodes’ whose content is closely related.  As with the first two movements, one can only marvel again about Mozart’s spectacular genius and his spontaneous creativity.  One can sense that he did not have to think for too long….there were plenty of options up his sleeve which he spilled out at choice.  And yes, this last movement is unashamedly ‘happy’ music, but still so very deep as well.

Going back to my first comments, I have chosen this concerto at random.  Perhaps it has its own quality but if you get into it then there are at least ten other gems of equal quality awaiting you and they are really worth getting to know.  This concerto is excellently performed by Zoltán Kocsis on Spotify.  The first movement is a bit quicker than some others I know, but it’s very good.  If you were to buy it in some form I can strongly recommend Leif Ove Andsnes with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra.  It’s also good to appreciate outstanding Mozart beyond the Requiem.

https://open.spotify.com/track/1Y7WXtTO8eHW5kaHqAfoHj?si=wPI_hOgyRu6EUjmuDCsDuQ

https://open.spotify.com/track/2RCwxyeM6P2KIQ53zkscNF?si=JS7zpco4SGGVYN2BG2eELQ

https://open.spotify.com/track/2fPs3Pg0WIxTr5Bvz5IRGo?si=t9Gvd2_MStGDCi2-KOOm0w

Thought for the Week
Many of you will know that I am going to be 70 on Thursday (‘yeah right’ I hear you gasp in disbelief).
It will be ‘in isolation’ as with many others in a similar situation, but I am lucky.  Isolation for me is limiting but not total, and my limits are completely insignificant when compared with what others are doing to look after us all.  I have no business to complain at all except to say that I am missing you and what we all do.  However, if I can be light-hearted just once and in the absence of the roaring masses, I would like to take this opportunity to wish myself a very happy birthday.  🤪

Look after yourselves and keep well,
Richard