MOZART & FRIENDS

Allegretto commodo assai
Minuetto

Boccherini’s chamber music was extremely popular in Paris at the end of the eighteenth century. He was working in Madrid at the time, and had a lively correspondence with the composer and publisher Pleyel who had settled in Paris in 1795. In July 1797 Boccherini wrote about “an excellent oboist called Gaspar Barli not only has an extraordinary sweetness but draws the finest sounds from the highest register of his instrument.” Barli was the court oboist to Charles III and Charles IV of Spain and was for this remarkable player that Boccherini wrote a set of six quintets for oboe and strings. When Pleyel published them in Paris the same year, he clearly had an eye on maximising sales: they appeared as ‘Six nouveaux Quintetti pour flûte ou hautbois’, and they are often still played on the flute, as well as the oboe that Boccherini intended. The D minor Quintet is in two movements, both in the home key. The first has some attractive harmonic quirks while the second is a formal but very engaging Minuet which also has hints of the Spanish fandango.

Nigel Simeone © 2012

According to his own thematic catalogue, Mozart composed this work on 23 May 1791 for the blind glass harmonica player Marianne Kirchgässner (1769–1808) for her to perform on a visit to Vienna (according to Köchel she first played it on 10 June, and it was included in her concert, on 19 August). Cliff Eisen reports that this gifted musician’s death in 1808 was attributed at the time ‘to nerve damage cause by the vibrations of her instrument’. Rumours persisted, especially in Vienna, about the risks of nerve damage, and this may be one reason for the instrument’s decline. Incidentally, its most famous exponent – Benjamin Franklin – suffered no such side effects. Mozart’s Adagio and Rondo has the distinction of being his last completed chamber work, scored for glass harmonica, flute, oboe, viola and cello. It’s music of masterly restraint and economy, a wonderful small-scale example of his late style. When the Adagio and Rondo was first published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1799 the title page stated that the glass harmonica could be played by a piano – as it is in this concert. This eminently practical idea apparently came from Mozart’s widow, Constanze.

Nigel Simeone 2014

Today if Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1766-1803) is remembered at all, it is for having completed Mozart’s Requiem. He was born in the Austrian town of Schwanenstadt. His first music lessons were from his father who then sent him to the Gymnasium in Kremsmünster where he received thorough music lessons in voice, organ, violin and composition. In 1788, he moved to Vienna where he studied with Antonio Salieri and then during 1790-1791 with Mozart with whom he became a close friend. Mozart, on his deathbed, knew that he would not live to complete his Requiem and discussed his ideas for competing the work with Süssmayr who is generally credited by scholars as having completed the bulk of the work. Interestingly, Mozart’s last son, born in 1791 a few months before his death, was named Franz Xaver. Most scholars believe this was no coincidence and posit it to one of two possibilities: the first that Mozart chose the name to honor his close friend and student, the second, less likely although there is considerable evidence to support it, that Franz Xaver Mozart (1791-1844) was the son of Süssmayr with whom Mozart’s wife Constanze had had an affair. After Mozart’s death, Süssmayr obtained several conducting positions at Vienna’s major theaters. A prolific composer, as were most of this era, he had over 600 compositions to his credit, mostly for voice or opera. He did not write a great deal of chamber music. There are two quintets, this being the second.

The Quintet in D Major, judging from its catalog number, was a late work composed sometime after 1792 and probably closer to 1800. It is one of the few pieces of chamber music that he wrote and the fact that it is for an unusual combination of instruments lends credence to the conclusion that it was the result of a commission from an amateur enthusiast that Süssmayr had received. In three movements, the opening and elegant Allegro con brio, sounds very Mozartean, certainly no accident considering that Süssmayr was his student and had copiously studied his composition methods. In fact, if you did not know better, you might well think that it was written by Mozart. In the somewhat short middle movement, Adagio, the flute and violin are entrusted with presenting much of the lovely melody. The finale, a dance-like Rondo allegretto, again sounds very much like Mozart.