The feather in the cap of the Utzon Room’s premier concert in a series with the SSO’s Cocktail Hour chamber music presentation, now in its third year brings together beautiful music in the exquisite venue, at the Opera house adjacent to the panorama of Sydney Harbour.
Tonight its all about the power, passion and artistry where technical virtuosity and creative inspiration enriches our lives. History has bestowed the ability for musicians to adapt well-known pieces and putting their own spin on them, sometimes for practical reasons, sometimes aesthetic ones and on occasion, as an exercise in instrumentation and orchestration.
Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante was originally written for two solo instruments and small orchestra, but today we hear it reduced to just one instrument, each part coming through clearer and stronger as a result.
The musicians for this program:
Sophie Cole violin
Alexander Norton violin
Anna-Louise Comerford viola
Rosemary Curtin viola
Krispy Conrau cello
Fenella Gill cello
David Campbell double bass
Alexandre Oguey core anglais
Lucy Smith horn
Our presenter, the ebullient Genevieve Lang.
* Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
* Horn Quintet, K407 (1782)
* Mozart arr. Oguey
* Adagio, K580a (1789)
* Mozart arr.ANON
* Grande Sestetto Concertante,
after Sinfonia Concertante, K364 (1779)
This is the 9th year that the SSO musicians have been curating this series in the Utzon Room, a special treat for those present with closer contact to the performers and giving the esteemed musicians a creative expression as chamber musicians away from the concert hall stage. Each of the six concerts in this series has been curated by one musician, making for a focused showcase on their instruments and providing deeper insights into the individuals that make up the SSO. Genevieve Lang says performing chamber repertoire is all about enjoying music with friends. Alexandre Oguey’s wonderfully creative arrangements for our ensamble ‘Cor plus four’ are to Cocktail Hour devotees. His beautiful arrangement of this Mozart Adagio is one of our favourite small party pieces. Keen observers of Mozart’s music will note that tonight’s performance is the Quintet as a Sextet and the Sestetto as a Septetto.
Notes about the music: The work was completed in 1782, the time of Mozart’s early success in Vienna, notably the German opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio and his marriage to Costanze Weber. After his death it was Leutgeb who helped Costanze collect and order the composer’s scores. The F major Adagio KVAnh 94/580 a is a fragment of 73 bars length, probably composed for clarinet and 3 basset horns. Alexandre Oguey says, ‘ someone wrote “English Horn” on the top, so people started completing ans rearranging it for core and string trio’. I made my own with an added bass, so it’s more a completion than arrangement. Alexandre transposed the piece to C which shows the cor anglais timbre beautifully, preparing us for the increasing emotionl intensity and ornamental development of the piece.
By the mid-1780s while ensconced in Vienna Mozart had written a number of stage works including the Marriage of Figaro, his breakthrough comic opera. Works like Sinfonia Concertante, written at the same time as Idomeneo, is certainly a substantial piece, the opening Maestoso movement designed before solo instruments explored the different characteristics of each other. The operatic mode is most noticeable in the andante slow movement imparts a somewhat objectified sense of the tragic and pathetic. Here as in the first movement, the interweaving of the solo parts suggests a vocal duet, the finale suggests a playful dance containing some of the flashiest writing in the piece.
Mozart experienced difficulties from mid-1777 to the beginning of 1791. As it happens in showbiz, his popularity waned in part due to the war between the Turjs and the Austri Hungarians and theatres closed, added to which so many patrons left town to escape conscription. Even though his relationship with Joseph Leutgeb, the brilliant Horn player, whome he labled, ass ,oxe and fool was fraught, he dedicated his four concerts a rondo and perhaps, the most challenging of all, the Qintet K407, described as a mini concerto. Mozart gives the strings some wonderful quartet-style writing in the sliw movement.
A totally wonderful concert.
