Franz Xavier Mozart: Piano concerto no 2

Day 212

Franz Xavier Mozart: Piano concerto no 2 in E flat op 25

Henri Sigfirdsson

Lemberg Symphony Orchestra

Gunhard Mattes

I didn’t realise until quite recently that Mozart’s youngest son was a composer in his own right. He never knew his father as he was born only a few months before his father died. He was reasonably well known in early-romantic musical circles, for example he knew Schumann and Schubert and he was one of the many composer chosen by Diabelli to write a variation on his waltz theme. Whether this fame was due to his own talent as a composer or his parentage is a matter of debate.

This, the second of the composer’s two piano concerti, was an interesting piece. If I had heard it cold I might have through that is was an early world of Beethoven, particularly in the outer movements. The slow movement was more forward looking, with suggestions of the sort of fioratura which is probably derived from Hummel and which ultimately was full developed by Chopin.

There was certainly some attractive music here but also some fairly dull patches where the composer seems to get stuck into passage work that didn’t go anywhere. The melodic inspiration was patchy - some really lovely moments in the slow movement but elsewhere promising starts to tunes rather petered out into trivia.

I’m glad to have heard this and it was a more accomplished piece that I feared it might be. F X Mozart clearly had a real musical ability - but the piece does show up the difference between talent and genius.

Leopold Mozart: Horn Concerto

Day 211

Leopold Mozart: Horn concerto in D

Michael Thompson

Philharmonia Orchestra

Christopher Warren-Green

Leopold Mozart would have his place in musical history even if he were not Mozart’s father. His treatise on violin playing was an important book at the time of its publication but has taken an even greater importance in recent years because of what it tells us about performance practice in the early classical era.

But of course it is as Mozart’s father that he is best known. Perhaps these days his role in promoting his son’s early genius is seen more as exploitation rather than support but there is no doubting that his endeavours were responsible for Mozart’s early fame.  As a composer he soon left his father behind.  

Leopold’s horn concerto is an extraordinary example of very high horn writing which brings to mind some of Haydn’s experiments. But in purely musical terms it seems unremakable. It is typical example of early classical style - assured but with no particular distinction.If it were not a horn concerto but, say, a violin concerto I doubt that it would have even the tenuous place that it has in the repertoire.

Siegfried Wagner: Das Barenhauter

Day 210

Siegfried Wagner: Der Barenhauter

Soloists

Thuringian Symphony Orchestra

Konrad Bach

I start this exploration of musical relatives with Siegfried Wagner, who was of course not only the son of Richard Wagner but also the grandson of Franz Liszt. I imagine that is was inevitable that he was destined for a musical career. He had some success as a conductor at Bayreuth but he also composed a considerable body of work including 16 or so operas - more than his father. These were quite widely performed in the early years of the 20th century but then dropped out of the repertory fairly quickly, although there have been some recent revivals and many of the operas have now been recorded.

Der Barenhauter (The man in a bear's skin) was the first of his operas and - in relative terms - the best known. It is based, like most of his operas, on a fairy tale and shows the influence of his teacher Engelbert Humperdinck whose Hansel und Gretel is one of the very few post-Wagnerian operas to remain in the repertory.

I found Der Barenhauter to be an odd work with no real sense of stylistic unity. Some of the music had a Wagnerian intensity - such as the final duet - but in other places it seems extraordinary naive and harked back almost to the style of mid 19th century Singspiel. It really was a strange mixture. There were a couple of really beautiful passages for orchestra alone in the 3rd act which showed that Siegfried could write music of real quality - but for that very reason they stood out from much of the rest of the piece.

Siegfried Wagner has his devotees - there is an international society dedicated to promoting his work - but I can't help wondering whether anybody would ever want to revive this music were it not for the fact that the composer was his father's son.  I suspect that I might be asking the same question about some of the other music I hear in this part of the project. 

Weelkes: Four anthems

Day 209

Thomas Weelkes: Four anthems

When David Heard

How Amiable Are Thy Dwellings

Gloria in excelsis Deo

O Jonathan

Winchester Cathedral Choir

David Hill

In many ways this was saving the best till last! This is the final posting in this series on Tudor church music. Weelkes was a composer whose name I knew well but as far as I know I had never heard any of his music. If these four pieces are anything like typical then the loss is mine because they were all superb. They unfold beautifully at a very controlled pace and explore a great variety of textures with some really impressive high notes. There are some very interesting moments of harmonic invention, especially the cadence to the last of these anthems, which really took me by surprise.

So a good end to this week of Tudor music. The next few days will be looking at something quite different - music by the fathers and sons (and sometimes grandfathers and grandsons) of major composers.  I've already covered the Bach family in this project but they are in a category all of their own, with several of them being major figures in their own right. I'll explore this week if any of the relatives whose music I listened to are substantial figures themselves or are only known because of the family ties with a great composer.

Tye: Four pieces

Day 208

Christopher Tye: Four pieces

Omnes gentes plaudits manibus

In pace in idipsum

I lift my hear to thee, my God

Save me, O God

Choir of Magdalen College Oxford

Bill Ives

The fact that two of these pieces are in English and two in Latin rather makes the point that Tudor composers had to work in an environment where allegiances between the Protestant and Catholic faiths were constantly changing. Christopher Tye was based in Ely and seems to have had a fairly consistent career as a church musician. I couldn’t really see that there was much of a difference between the English and Latin settings - perhaps the English was a little more syllabic, but essentially these feel part of the same tradition - but then I am no expert in this music so there may be subtle differences that I am simply not aware of.  I enjoyed this music but again didn’t really have many points of reference to appreciate the subtleties, Perhaps I need total iimersion in Tudor music for several months to really start to understand how all of these composers relate to each other.

Carver: O bone Jesu

Day 207

Robert Carver: O bone Jesu

The Sixteen

Harry Christophers

This is an astonishing piece.  Robert Carver was the pre-eminent Scottish composer of the Renaissance era. - indeed some commentators regard his as the most important Scottish composer of all time.

The motet is in 19 parts. So in many ways it is of the same tradition as Spem in Alium but to me it was, despite the complexity of the part writing,  more introverted and contemplative. The sound was simply gorgeous. Not much is known about the life and career of Carver, or indeed how much music he actually wrote in his long life.  But this one piece alone puts him in the company of some much more famous composers.   

Tallis: Three Anthems

Day 206

Thomas Tallis: Three Anthems

O Lord, give they holy spirit

Remember me not, O Lord God

Hear the voice and prayer

Tallis Scholars

Peter Phillips

I've said before that I have not done any choral singing. That is not quite true - at University I did take part in a performance of Tallis's 40 part motet Spem in Allium.  It was an amazing experience to be in the middle of that wonderful texture - and very scary in case I was in the wrong place when everything suddenly comes to a temporary halt and there is absolute silence.

There three anthems are much more modest but give plenty of opportunities to understand why Tallis is such a highly regarded composer. They are largely chordal but but have plenty of polyphonic textures. There are some typical soaring moments but I would say that generally these are rather subdued, inward looking pieces.  Mostly the harmony was straightforward and consonant but there were certainly a few moments where Tallis enjoyed experimenting with dissonance. I feel that I have now seen the two extremes of Tallis - the 40 part motet and these tiny anthems. There must be a lot in between to explore.