Stockport Symphony Orchestra 29 February 2020
Felix Mendelssohn (1809 – 1847): A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, Op. 21 (1826)
Felix Mendelssohn rivalled even Mozart and Schubert for compositional precocity. Breaking the mould of composers born poor and dying poorer, his upbringing in the family mansion exposed him to Berlin’s artists and intelligentsia from an early age. By the age of 16, he had written twelve string symphonies, half a dozen operas and his Octet, and at his premature death from subarachnoid brain haemorrhage, he had achieved remarkable fame and wealth as composer and director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.
Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream came in two parts, the Overture a sparkling display of teenage brilliance in 1826 and the longer incidental music to the complete play (incorporating the Overture) in 1842. He had been exposed to readings or performances of high-quality translations of Shakespeare in the family parlour and gardens, and he wrote to his friend, the composer William Sterndale Bennett, that “It was in that garden one night that I encountered Shakespeare”. In July 1826, he wrote loftily to his sister “I have grown accustomed to composing in our garden… Today or tomorrow I am going to dream there A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. This is, however, an enormous audacity...”
Originally written for two pianos, then orchestrated and heavily revised, the Overture was immediately popular after its première in Szczecin, at which JLF Mendelssohn (aged 17¾) also joined the violin section for Beethoven’s ninth symphony. It follows classical sonata form but with unmissable thematic references to the play. After four enchanting woodwind chords (in place of the customary slow introduction), the intricate, rushing string theme immediately conjures images of fairies dashing through the forests outside Athens. A more worldly second theme depicts the young lovers, and a braying ‘hee-haw’ the asinine character of Bottom. All seems set for a grand finish, but Puck and the fairies have the last word with the scurrying string theme and magical woodwind chords.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1891): Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 (1786)
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Allegro maestoso
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Andante
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Allegretto
Probably the most famed of all the child prodigies in any genre, Mozart’s early years followed an entirely different trajectory from the charmed life of Mendelssohn. On realising his son’s talents, Leopold Mozart arranged an extensive and arduous touring schedule which, ultimately, left his son nothing in later life. It was in his latter years that Wolfgang wrote this titanic, most symphonic of his concertos, heavily scored for an orchestra including trumpets and timpani. After the success of The Marriage of Figaro some months earlier, his composing efforts were increasingly turning from concert platform to opera stage, so perhaps when the 25th of his 27 piano concerti was written alongside the Prague symphony, he was making the most of his chance for some bombast. The concerto is longer than any of his others, and the choice of C-major is also significant as the key of his expansive Jupiter symphony. The concerto was written for a series of subscription concerts in 1786, seemingly finished hastily the night before its première, and fared better posthumously than contemporaneously.
The first movement immediately opens on a broad canvas, its bold (even pompous) prolonged introduction heralding grandeur to come. Even amongst the apparent banality of the opening moments, though, there is a hint of mischief in some rogue A-flats, a note entirely out of place in C-major but which opens up the raft of minor-key incursions which appear later in the movement. A persistent short-short-short-long rhythmic figure pervades the movement in much the same way as the opening movement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony, and a martial rising theme seems to hint at the (then unwritten) La Marseillaise.
The second and third movements are less ambiguous. The tranquil slow movement is simple in outlook, with little development of its lyrical themes, and seems to alternate between the idle and intricately ornate. The finale, a bristling rondo, borrows its opening theme from Idomeneo and hammers the concerto into an ebullient conclusion via a flurry of orchestral and solo fireworks.