SCO Mozart Gala Usher Hall Edinburgh 3rd October 2024 Review
SCO Mozart Gala at the Usher Hall Edinburgh tonight was a chance to experience two very different aspects of Mozart as a composer and as a person. The first work performed this evening, Symphony No 38 in D ‘Prague’ was Mozart the working composer needing to keep his reputation as a musician very much in the public view, and of course keeping his own finances derived from music in order too. All too often today, we can easily forget that, like so many of the great composers of music down through the centuries, Mozart had to make a living from his music.
Although this work is commonly known as the “Prague Symphony”, this is because of where it was performed first, not that it was written for Prague, or in Prague. A little give-away here is that Mozart composed the Prague Symphony which is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings in the then older (this work was written in 1786), but still very popular, format of three and not four movements. This work is also slightly different from many other works by Mozart, as we know from surviving documents that he wrote musical sketches for it and worked his way through themes, sometimes giving them a little tweak or two along the way.
Symphony No 38 in D ‘Prague’ is a remarkable work by any standards, written when Mozart was a hugely experienced composer (only a few short years before his still very young death in 1791). This is a work of power and subtlety, full of so many different emotions and musical shades. It is also the work of someone who knew exactly what his audience wanted to hear from him and who was confident in his skills as a composer to produce a work that few, if any, of his contemporaries could match in musical complexity.
By contrast to this his Mass in C minor was not a commissioned work, or written, it seems, with any musical or financial benefactor in mind. This was Mozart writing music for himself and his love of the moment, and his wife-to-be (much against his father’s wishes), Constanze. The work is today incomplete, and may have been so when first publicly performed, with Mozart filling in some of the usual format of a mass with music that he had already written.
With a very different and far darker sound to the first work tonight, this mass is a complex, possibly even personal, tribute by Mozart to the earlier works of Bach and Handel and tonight that contrast between the two works was fully brought to life by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and conductor Maxim Emelyanychev.
This is a large work with Lucy Crowe (Soprano), Anna Dennis (Soprano), Thomas Walker (Tenor) andEdward Grint (Bass Baritone) delivering with great skill the technical demands of vocals along with the SCO chorus. This work is so personal to Mozart that one of the vocal parts was written to highlight the talents of Constanze and it was she who sang the first soprano part of this work.
Mass in C is by any musical standards a lavish work, but it also gives us an insight into Mozart himself as a person at this time in his life (1782/83). At this time, Mozart, with probably more than a little help from Constanze, was having to take on the many new responsibilities that marriage brought to him, but it was also a time when he was re-examining and re-affirming his own religious faith, and these changes in his life are often reflected in this work.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Although this work is commonly known as the “Prague Symphony”, this is because of where it was performed first, not that it was written for Prague, or in Prague. A little give-away here is that Mozart composed the Prague Symphony which is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings in the then older (this work was written in 1786), but still very popular, format of three and not four movements. This work is also slightly different from many other works by Mozart, as we know from surviving documents that he wrote musical sketches for it and worked his way through themes, sometimes giving them a little tweak or two along the way.
Symphony No 38 in D ‘Prague’ is a remarkable work by any standards, written when Mozart was a hugely experienced composer (only a few short years before his still very young death in 1791). This is a work of power and subtlety, full of so many different emotions and musical shades. It is also the work of someone who knew exactly what his audience wanted to hear from him and who was confident in his skills as a composer to produce a work that few, if any, of his contemporaries could match in musical complexity.
By contrast to this his Mass in C minor was not a commissioned work, or written, it seems, with any musical or financial benefactor in mind. This was Mozart writing music for himself and his love of the moment, and his wife-to-be (much against his father’s wishes), Constanze. The work is today incomplete, and may have been so when first publicly performed, with Mozart filling in some of the usual format of a mass with music that he had already written.
With a very different and far darker sound to the first work tonight, this mass is a complex, possibly even personal, tribute by Mozart to the earlier works of Bach and Handel and tonight that contrast between the two works was fully brought to life by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and conductor Maxim Emelyanychev.
This is a large work with Lucy Crowe (Soprano), Anna Dennis (Soprano), Thomas Walker (Tenor) andEdward Grint (Bass Baritone) delivering with great skill the technical demands of vocals along with the SCO chorus. This work is so personal to Mozart that one of the vocal parts was written to highlight the talents of Constanze and it was she who sang the first soprano part of this work.
Mass in C is by any musical standards a lavish work, but it also gives us an insight into Mozart himself as a person at this time in his life (1782/83). At this time, Mozart, with probably more than a little help from Constanze, was having to take on the many new responsibilities that marriage brought to him, but it was also a time when he was re-examining and re-affirming his own religious faith, and these changes in his life are often reflected in this work.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Please note that unless requested by performers/pr/venues that this website no longer uses the "star rating" system on reviews.