Piano Concerto in G Major, Fr.J.Haydn (1732 - 1809) Thomas Zajkowski, piano Raymond Storms, countertenor Haydn's father was a poor wheelwright who sent him, at the age of eight, to Vienna to be trained as a chorister at St. Stephen's Cathedral where he became known for his fine voice. In 1759 Haydn was appointed music director of the small musical establishment of Count Morzin. In 1761 he became conductor of Prince Esterházy's private orchestra and was appointed kapellmeister on the death of his predecessor and immediate superior Gregorius Werner in 1766. This post, which he filled for almost thirty years, was ideal for Haydn because it gave him the opportunity to work with a group of fine musicians. During his years at the Esterházy country estate, Haydn met many Viennese artists including Wolfgang Mozart. The death of Prince Nicholas in 1790 left Haydn free to come and go as he pleased and he accepted a contract to appear in London where he was hailed as a genius. Mozart is said to have begged him not to go to England because he spoke so few languages to which Haydn replied: "The language I speak is understood the world over". Keyboard Works: Haydn composed nearly fifty keyboard sonatas, the earlier intended for harpsichord and the last for the newly developed hammer-action fortepiano. The final works in this form include the so-called English Sonata in C major, written in 1795 during Haydn's second visit to London. Orfeo ed Euridice, C.W.Gluck (1714 – 1787) (born Erasbach, 2 July 1714; died Vienna, 15 Nov. 1787). His father was a forester in the Upper Palatinate (now the western extreme of Czechoslovakia); Czech was his native tongue. At about 14 he left home to study in Prague, where he worked as an organist. He soon moved to Vienna and then to Milan, where his first opera was given in 1741. Others followed, elsewhere in Italy and during 1745-6 in London, where he met Handel's music. After further travel (Dresden, Copenhagen, Naples, Prague) he settled in Vienna in 1752 as Konzertmeister of the Prince of Saxe-Hildburghausen's orchestra, then as Kapellmeister. He also became involved in performances at the court theatre of French opéras comiques, as arranger and composer, and he wrote Italian dramatic works for court entertainments. His friends tried, at first unsuccessfully, to procure a court post for him; but by 1759 he had a salaried position at the court theatre and soon after was granted a royal pension. He met the poet Calzabigi and the choreographer Angiolini, and with them wrote a ballet-pantomime Don Juan (1761) embodying a new degree of artistic unity. The next year they wrote the opera Orfeo ed Euridice, the first of Gluck's so-called 'reform operas'. In 1764 he composed an opéra comique, La rencontre imprévue, and the next year two ballets, he followed up the artistic success of Orfeo with a further collaboration with Calzabigi, Alceste (1767), this time choreographed by Noverre; a third, Paride ed Elena (1770), was less well received. Orfeo exemplifies most of his reform principles in its abandonment of simple recitative in favour of a more continuous texture (with orchestral recitative, arioso and aria running into one another) and its broad musical-dramatic spans in which different types of solo singing, dance and choral music are fully integrated. It also has a simple, direct plot, based on straightforward human emotions, which could appeal to an audience as the complicated stories used in contemporary opera seria, with their intrigues, disguises and subplots, could not. He had a limited compositional technique, but one that was sufficient for the aims he set himself. His music can have driving energy, but also a serenity reaching to the sublime. His historical importance rests on his establishment of a new equilibrium between music and drama, and his greatness on the power and clarity with which he projected that vision; he dissolved the drama in music instead of merely illustrating it. Gluck died in autumn 1787, widely recognized as the doyen of Viennese composers and the man who had carried through important reforms to the art of opera. Symphony No.29 in A major, K.201 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) In the summer of 1773 the teenage Mozart embarked on an extended visit to Vienna, returning just in time to take up his winter duties as Kapellmeister in the Austrian town of Salzburg (a position he famously deplored). We don't know exactly what went on in Vienna, but evidently he returned a changed man, as the four symphonies he wrote upon his return the greatest of which is the Symphony No.29 were longer, more serious, and more thought out than any he had written before. The opening of the Symphony No.29, in an eternally sunny Amajor, does indeed owe a debt to J.C. Bach, with its easy, openair grace; but it is amazing to hear how Mozart's genius instantly transcends the commonplace. There is none of the usual opening rhetoric, just an elusive octave leap in the first violins. But notice how this octaveleap idea begins to repeat itself almost obsessively, in rising sequence; whereupon the figure is thrown around the entire orchestra to glorious effect. Mozart then proceeds to build an entire web of symphonic argument out of this simple idea: a living dichotomy of the rude and the complex. A dialogue of lyric grace and rhythmic tension pervades the entire symphony in its extraordinary course. The Andante and Minuet movements both display a songfulness worthy of his greatest opera arias; and yet, everywhere, to the point of obsession, are nettlesome dotted rhythms that standard feature of earlier, French Baroque orchestral suites (old J.S. Bach wrote four of them himself), rhythms meant to convey regal pomp, nobility, and godliness. Thus beneath the music's sunny exterior, Mozart gives us a mysterious inner tension that can't quite be explained; it's as if the aristocratic value systems of preRevolutionary France were somehow breaking apart (a tension further explored, of course, in his class juggling opera after Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro). From its very opening, the finale is a further celebration of Mozart's teenage brilliance, in its constant paradigm of simplicity and subtlety. Remember that gentle octave leap from the symphony's beginning? Here it has been boisterously transformed, into jovial huntingmusic in 6/8 time. This "tallyho" aura would be enough for most composers, but Mozart immediately adds to the mix a tiny tag of an ascending scale; cascading downward trills; and an unassuming fournote arpeggio: all of this, in only one theme (it's easy to see why some of Mozart's lesser contemporaries often criticized his music for having "too many ideas"). And if this were not enough thematic drama, Mozart soon adds two major guideposts: a stamping, repeatednote figure in the horns, followed by a rocketlike ascending scale in the massed violins; our genial finale a la chasse has morphed into a Moliere farce. This amazing finale half huntingparty, half comedyoferrors is whipped to a froth, whereupon two massive chords finally bring down the house. © 2006 Alexander Platt