Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART

(1756-1791)

Molto allegro

Andantino con moto

Menuetto - Trio

Presto

Hands up if you’ve ever heard Mozart’s Symphony No. 30 in a concert before! And why haven’t you? At this point the annotator should probably retire, let the musicians present the symphony to you, and leave you to make up your own mind. Concerts may include discoveries as well as the tried-and-true. But as this particular Mozart symphony doesn’t seem to have emerged from the ruck (yet?) into the standard concert repertoire (which means, literally, an inventory, a collection of things discovered or found) - perhaps Mozart needs some help in this case.

Two of his symphonies from 1773-1774 have become standards: the ‘little’ G minor, No. 25 (which played under the titles of Amadeus the film) and No. 29 in A. They have distinctive features which make them memorable - the nervous, minor key intensity of one, the subtle overlapping of two ideas in the opening of the other. But neither symphony maintains from start to finish the same high level of invention and workmanship. Would we really expect that of a 17-year-old? No - far more likely he would still be absorbing influences and forming a personal style. Besides, his audience in Salzburg must have found both those symphonies rather puzzling.

With the present symphony in D major they would have been on more familiar ground. Symphonies then were not expected to be the central focus of a musical entertainment. Rather, like the Italian sinfonia-type operatic overture from which it derived, a symphony was more often a curtain-raiser, giving everyone something to play - plenty of loud, straightforward music - but not over-taxing the listener's powers of musical comprehension. D major was a key for trumpets (probably drums as well, but no timpani parts survive for this symphony) and for open strings on the violins. Music in this key could be brilliant, but also tending to the impersonal.

Mozart must have heard many Italian pieces of the kind on his visit to Italy two years earlier. But they are only one of the models for his own symphonies. Several of Mozart’s symphonies of 1773 are in the three-movement form of the Italians, but he was also experimenting in the Austrian symphony with Minuet, of which he may have heard examples in Vienna on his recent visit, not to mention, in Salzburg, from the pen of his colleague Michael Haydn, brother of the more famous Joseph.

A sure sign of this ‘Viennese’ influence is the use, in the first movement, of fully developed sonata form, with its thematic contrasts. This is very obvious in the first movement of Symphony No. 30, which also emphasises the drama of tonal opposition, as the dominant and tonic keys respectively are underlined by sustained horns and oboes near the end of each section.

The Andantino, in A (the dominant key) is for strings alone. The feel of this movement is close to divertimento or serenade idioms, but the occasional intricacy of the inner parts and the use of unequal phrase-lengths for contrast suggest the influence of Joseph Haydn’s string quartet writing.

Haydnesque too, is the minuet, though we perhaps ascribe too readily to Joseph Haydn’s influence what is characteristic of Austrian symphonic style of the period. The trio, for strings, includes a plausible imitation of the horns, banished from this G major section.

Einstein calls the last movement ‘not much more than a Kehraus’ (the last dance of the evening). Certainly its musical materials are very simple, though like the first movement, it is in sonata form, with some drama of dynamic contrasts in the development section. The similarity of the opening theme to that of the first movement is obvious to the ear as well as to the eye reading the score, though whether either theme is memorable enough to stick in the mind is doubtful. In a sense, this is Mozart’s intention - this is music for those who, in Sir Thomas Beecham’s words, like the noise it makes. But for the minority who notice these things, Mozart makes some interesting play with his simple materials.

It is doubtful whether many of Mozart’s symphonies were intended to survive his desire to perform them. He revived some of his Salzburg symphonies in Vienna (not this one), but was just as likely to compose something new for the occasion. Pity we can’t have a brand-new Mozart symphony for this concert (he would have expected something more up-to-date in a concert today: Bernstein perhaps?). The next best thing may be an unfamiliar Mozart symphony. And now you can say you’ve heard it!

First published in a Sydney Symphony Orchestra program, 2014