Symphony Preview: Merry Mozart, September 23 and 24, 2017

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In a new biography of Mozart, English author and Classic FM presenter John Suchet notes that, despite a life with its share of personal, professional, and financial trials, Mozart was "surely the happiest composer who ever lived."

Mozart, as drawn by Doris Stock, 1789

If you doubt that, just listen to the overture to Mozart's 1786 comic opera Le nozze di Figaro, the work that opens this weekend's (September 23 and 24) St. Louis Symphony concerts-the first in an all-Mozart series of three programs. From the racing eighth notes of its jovial opening to its exuberant coda around four minutes later, this is music that, as René Spencer Saller writes in her program notes, perfectly "conjures up the opera's mood of zany brilliance and pell-mell seduction."

The opera itself was a popular and artistic success but, like far too many of Mozart's projects, a commercial flop. Still, the overture-which was written after the opera was completed and which uses no tunes from the opera itself-never fails to delight.

Up next will be Piano Concerto No. 19 in F major, written towards the end of 1784 when Mozart was in his late 20s. He had just abandoned a secure but unsatisfying gig in Salzburg to make his mark in Vienna, then the musical capital of the Germanic music world. In a not entirely successful attempt to raise funds, the composer wrote and performed a number of piano concertos, including this one, for the public and the court.

In notes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, John Mangum points out that Mozart "had initially found great success" in Vienna but "[h]e soon discovered that the city's audiences were capricious and fickle, and that no one composer could keep their ears for long." Still, this concerto was a great showcase for Mozart's talent as both a composer and a pianist. "Pitched between exuberance and elegance," writes Ms. Saller, "it requires both technical prowess and a light touch." It also uses counterpoint in a way that reminds us of the fact that Mozart was spending his Saturday afternoons playing Bach scores at the home of Baron van Swieten.

The Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat major that comes next in the program was first performed in the last year of Mozart's life, when the composer's physical and fiscal health were both at a low ebb. You wouldn't know that from the music, though. Yes, the opening movement is more lyrical than exuberant and the music does take what the BBCs Linsday Kemp calls "frequent turns to the minor," but overall this doesn't really sound like the resigned farewell commentators thought it was before they found out that it was mostly written three years earlier in 1888.

Emanuel Ax
Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco

At the keyboard for this mini-Mozart series will be the renowned Emanuel Ax. As I have noted in the past, Mr. Ax is a musician who can make the piano dance as well as sing, both of which he'll need to do for this weekend's concertos. He has displayed a good rapport with maestro David Robertson on his previous appearances here, which is all to the good.

This first concert in the Mozart mini-festival will conclude with the composer's last and, as far as I'm concerned, his greatest symphony. "I believe it is the mark of true genius," writes Mr. Suchet, "that when external circumstances are bleak, creativity may not only continue, but soar," and soar is what the Symphony No. 41 in C major (known as the "Jupiter" symphony, although nobody is sure why) certainly does. But don't take my word for it; here's Tom Service, writing for The Guardian in 2014:

For me, this C major symphony is written at the furthest edges of the possible for Mozart, in terms of seeing just how many different expressive and compositional contrasts he can cram into a single symphony. And he's not doing that for the sake of reconciling these opposites or to create a greater unity (the kind of thing that we like to imagine Mozart was up to, because we prefer to think of him as a romantic idealist rather than an 18th century humanist). Rather, I think he's trying to achieve a complexity of emotional experience and richness of invention that is poised - sometimes on this side, sometimes on the other! - of a musical cliff-edge of coherence. A bit like the mixed metaphors of that sentence; what I mean is that this is a symphony of extremes, something that's symbolised in the juxtaposition of the martial and the plangent in the two ideas you hear in the symphony's very first four bars.

Actually, you need not even take his word for it. René Jacobs and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra have a corker of a recording recommended by Mr. Service that you can hear on that great repository of copyright violations, YouTube. If you haven't had a chance to become acquainted with the remarkable music already, this is a darned good way to do it.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, with pianist Emanuel Ax, in an all-Mozart program Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., September 23 and 24. Performances take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.