MOZART VIOLIN CONCERTO
Six Pieces for Orchestra is a freely
atonal piece that was a waystation
toward Webern’s fully organized twelve-
tone works. It was composed for the
largest orchestra he ever wrote for—an
ensemble more typical of the music of
Mahler and Richard Strauss. (We will
hear Webern’s 1928 revision, which
reduces the orchestra somewhat.) As
his career progressed, he would become
much more refined and austere in his
scoring as he sought to systematize
every aspect of his music from pitch to
rhythm to dynamics.
However, in Six Pieces the emphasis
is on the colors of instruments: what
Webern called Klangfarbenmelodie
or “melody of colors.” Instead of
recognizable melodic themes, the
composer gives us a feast of audacious,
often sensual, color contrasts between
instruments. Also playing a powerful
role is silence: the unadorned canvas on
which the colors are painted.
Each piece is very brief, the longest
lasting only four minutes. Webern
tells us they were strongly influenced
by his grief over the recent death
of his mother. Much of the music
is very quiet, but it can suddenly
become loud and violent, as we hear
at the end of the second piece when
snarling brass erupt. Less than a minute
long, the third piece is all imaginative
delicacy from its weeping muted viola
opening to its shimmer of harp and
glockenspiel. The fourth piece, the
longest, begins with an almost inaudible
shudder of tam-tam and bass drum that
builds slowly to a shattering climax: a
nightmare funeral march that was the
genesis of countless horror-film scores.
The sixth piece closes with fragile,
fragmented solos, dying away in a
wistful violin solo and pings of celesta
and harp over a subliminal tone at the
bottom of the glockenspiel.
VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 5 IN A MAJOR,
“TURKISH”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born in Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756;
died in Vienna, Austria, December 5, 1791
Although he eventually chose to
concentrate on the keyboard, the young
Mozart was as equally gifted on the
violin. As concertmaster of the Prince-
Archbishop Colloredo’s court orchestra,
he played the principal violin part and led
the orchestra from his chair. He was soon
to grow deeply frustrated with this role,
but between 1773 and 1775, it inspired
him to write his five violin concertos,
as well as a number of other works with
prominent solo violin parts for himself.
The last three of these concertos, all
written in 1775 when he was 19, rank
among his earliest masterpieces.
Dated December 20, 1775, the Violin
Concerto in A Major is the last of the
group. Full of emotional shifts and
surprises, it shows Mozart playing freely
and creatively with the concerto norms of
his day. It is nicknamed “Turkish” for an
exuberant episode of “alla Turca” (“in the
Turkish manner”) music Mozart inserted
in its vivacious finale. Such music—with
its exotic leaping melodies, menacing
unison passages and the clatter of drums
and cymbals—was very fashionable in
Europe during the late-18 th century. But
it isn’t really “Turkish” at all; rather, as
Mozart scholar Neal Zaslow explains, it
came from Hungary.
The first movement opens with music
of wit and insouciance. The orchestral
violins merely sketch the principal theme
with pert ascending notes. Likewise, the
second theme with its humorous repeated
notes is a preview of what the soloist will
play. Now comes Mozart’s first surprise:
instead of entering in this mood, the
soloist floats in with a dreamy romance
over rustling orchestral strings in a much
slower tempo. Eventually, he shifts up
to Allegro and transforms the orchestral
pencil sketch of the principal theme into
a soaring, full-color melody. He then
expands the second theme into music of
great charm. A brief development section
deepens the music’s expressiveness before
the violinist reprises the now rapturous
main theme.
Movement two is an early example of
Mozart’s almost painfully beautiful slow
movements, which yearn for something
more than ordinary life can provide. The
long-spun melodic lines are constantly
punctuated by sighing figures in the
orchestra. In the movement’s middle
section, poignant harmonies intensify
the mood to the brink of tears.
Instrumentation: Two flutes including
piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets,
bass clarinet, two bassoons including
contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets,
four trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion,
harp, celeste and strings
S E P– O C T 201 9 / OV E R T U R E
27