Mozart's delightful Serenade for 13 Winds in B-flat major, K. 361 "Gran Partita"


Glenn Gould was famous for his Bach, but some people remember him best for trash-talking Mozart. Even though he recorded most of Mozart's Piano Sonatas, and really loved a few of them, he also went on record as saying he thought many were fairly inane. 

What? Yep. He was too predictable as a composer, especially in his late works. He stayed in one key too long and had the performers just play scales up and down their instruments. Although he was by all reports a great musician and improviser, his compositions often ended up being nothing but "cute". Yes and no. I'd like to present you one of the pieces that isn't only cute; it's also brilliant!

Mozart wrote this Serenade both in Munich and Vienna. And if you know those two cities, how could you expect anything less than a masterpiece to have been born there? He was in his prime at 26 and this piece hour-long piece really gives the listeners - and the lucky performers - their due. 

I first became aware of this masterpiece in 1985 when it was featured in Peter Schaffer's film Amadeus. Salieri is describing it, "On the page it looked, nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse, like a rusty squeeze box. And then, suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging there, unwavering, until ... a clarinet took it over. Sweetened it into a phrase of such delight. This was no composition by a performing monkey, this was a music I had never heard. Filled with such longing, such longing. It's as if I was hearing the voice of God itself." 

Having played Mozart on the piano much of my life, I appreciate the beauty and challenge of performing his music on that instrument. His late symphonies, his operas and the Requiem also make great listening. But even though I don't play a wind instrument, I believe this Serenade holds a special place in his Köchelverzeichnis and is worth a listen.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

Image
Recently a friend asked me which music piece IS ME. This is it. This song by Gustav Mahler is one I've long felt an affinity for. If I said I loved it, that would smack of self-love, wouldn't it? It has been close to me since I first heard it, probably around 1983. That is also when I discovered the incredible voice and personality of Maureen Forrester , who gave a song recital at our college in October 1983.  Maureen and I hit it off after her recital in 1983 After that fateful and wonderful meeting, I listened to all the recordings she had made which were readily available (and even ordered rare import copies of Canadian pressings). As so often happened with me, a person helped me discover a certain area of music. Having worked with Bruno Walter as a young woman, she became a renowned expert in the music of Gustav Mahler. But her repertoire spanned four centuries of music and dozens of languages. The afternoon before her recital, I had hosted the "Classical Hour" on
Read more

Alberto Ginastera's Variaciones Concertantes

Image
  If you look closely at the CD cover above, you'll see Ginastera down at the bottom in third place. Although the other two pieces are lovely and world premiere recordings to boot, my love goes out to the concert variations this time. I was thrilled when my mother sent me this recording right after I moved to Germany in 1990. George Manahan and I had a friendly relationship while I lived in Richmond. We had dinner together and I went to very many of his orchestra rehearsals. We often talked about music together and I would lend him books about Mahler that he hadn't read yet. In one case, while he was rehearsing Mahler 5, he stopped during the Adagietto, turned around and asked ME what I thought about the balance between the harps and the orchestra, even though his assistant conductor was sitting up in the balcony. I was sitting down below with two of my best friends, my girlfriend and her parents. I felt like a king.  I never got to hear him conduct Ginastera, though. I believ
Read more

Schumann's Piano Concerto

Image
  Martha Argerich plays the Schumann Piano Concerto in Amsterdam Most of Robert Schumann's music puzzles me. Perhaps because he was insane; or maybe I'm crazy. Or perhaps it is because he composed his music to go straight to the heart and my head often gets in the way of this kind of listening. Whatever it is, I am often at a loss as to what the music is trying to say. His Kinderszenen are easy enough to appreciate, but I've read few critics who have praised either his concerto for violin or the cello concerto. The Piano Concerto in a-minor , on the other hand, is one of the most frequently played and most lovely piano concerti in the concert repertoire. It is often called a woman's concerto, perhaps because the half-hour long work is not as strenuous to play as some of the other piano concerti in the repertoire.  My first introduction to the piece came at William & Mary when the first movement was to be played by a student pianist, Steven Budd, who had won that yea
Read more