109 / 116
Burdened by the nancial strain of the extended
sojourn in Mannheim, Mozart and his mother
sold their carriage to a coachman in exchange
for a one-way shuttle to Paris, where they ar-
rived on March ,
.
e Concert Spirituel
commissioned several choral and solo numbers
for Holy Week (replacing “weak and poor” ones
by Ignaz Holzbauer) and a
sinfonia concertante
for wind quartet. A two-act opera,
Alexandre
et Roxane
, was discussed but never produced.
Mozart also accepted his rst music student.
Still, the money shortage remained severe, and
from a distance Leopold made provisions for
an emergency loan. A far more di cult ordeal
awaited—the death of his beloved mother on
July following a brief illness. Two more ardu-
ous months made plain one fact: Paris o ered
no real future. Mozart slowly wound his way
back to Salzburg, where a slightly improved
position as Konzertmeister awaited him at the
archbishop’s court.
Amid this professional uncertainty and person-
al anguish, Mozart produced the Piano Sonata
No. in A minor, .
d/ , an indisputable
masterpiece for the keyboard. An air of trage-
dy hovers over this entire work, an impression
reinforced by the extensive use of minor keys,
expressive harmonic movement, and lyrical
breadth.
e
Allegro maestoso
unleashes a tor-
rent of passion, its agitated melody buttressed
with alternating minor chords and dissonant
clusters. In the ethereal
Andante cantabile con
espressione
, Mozart foreshadowed the Roman-
tic musical poeticism of Schubert, Chopin, and
Schumann with a forward-moving succession
of character themes.
e traditionally light-
hearted rondo nale transforms into a poignant
dark-spirited conclusion.
–Program notes ©
Todd E. Sullivan
PETER SERKIN,
piano
At age pianist Peter Serkin entered the Curtis
Institute of Music, continuing a musical lineage
that includes pianist Rudolf Serkin (his father)
and violinist and composer Adolf Busch (his
grandfather). A year later he made his Marlboro
Music Festival debut and performed at Carn-
egie Hall with George Szell and the Cleveland
Orchestra, as well as Eugene Ormandy and
the Philadelphia Orchestra. Serkin has since
performed with many of the world’s foremost
orchestras under the direction of Seiji Ozawa,
Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Ab-
bado, Christoph Eschenbach, and many others.
His dedication to chamber music has included
the formation of the Tashi Quartet and collab-
orations with Pamela Frank, Yo-Yo Ma, and the
Budapest, Guarneri, Orion, and Shanghai String
Quartets. Serkin’s repertory spans ve centuries
of music, from the earliest Baroque forms to
th- and st-century works, of which he is an
avid proponent. He has given world premieres
of works by such composers as Toru Takemitsu,
Peter Lieberson, Oliver Knussen, and Alexan-
der Goehr; in
he premiered Elliot Car-
ter’s
Intermittences
at Carnegie Hall. In recent
years, Serkin has premiered several pieces by
Charles Wuorinen, including his Piano Quin-
tet No. with the Brentano String Quartet and
Piano Concertos Nos. and with the Boston
Symphony and Metropolitan Opera Orches-
tras, respectively. In
he gave the premiere
of a third concerto with the Saint Paul Cham-
ber Orchestra.
e winner of the
Gram-
my for Best New Classical Artist, Serkin has
earned four further Grammy nominations for
his many recordings, which include a perfor-
mance of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. –
that received the Deutsche Schallplatten award
and was named “Best Recording of the Year” by
Stereo Review
. He is currently on the faculties of
the Bard College Conservatory of Music and the
Longy School of Music. Peter Serkin made his
rst appearance at Ravinia in
, and tonight
marks his th season performing at the festival.
lonely owers provide a tender interlude (No. ).
Schumann retained Hebbel’s gruesome poetry
at the head of No. :
e owers that grow so high
are here pale as death;
only one in the middle
stands there in dark red.
It comes not from the sun
nor from its glow;
it comes from the earth,
which drank human blood.
A friendly landscape inspires carefree senti-
ments (No. ), followed by a peaceful episode
within a shelter (No. ). Chromatic writing com-
municates a sense of warning in the prophetic
bird song (No. ). e hunters sing a lusty song
(No. ), then peacefully exit the woods (No. ).
Franz Liszt, who respected Schumann and gen-
erally admired his music, described this cycle
and the
Bilder aus Osten
as works “full of the
rarest distinctions; they lend the local color a
certain charm that some will vainly try to repro-
duce from their external form, instead of pursu-
ing their mystery by divining the feeling which
that form arouses in mortal hearts.”
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Piano Sonata No. in A minor, .
d/
Nothing went as expected during Mozart’s
“grand journey” to Paris via Munich, Augs-
burg, and Mannheim in
– . He had for-
mally requested a release from service to the
imperious Archbishop of Salzburg on August
a er receiving clear indications that his court
position would remain part-time. Almost four
weeks later, the archbishop dismissed Wolfgang
and his father Leopold, though the elder Mozart
eventually retained his appointment.
e son,
however, took advantage of this newly gained
liberation to pursue more permanent employ-
ment at another European court. e family car-
riage bearing Mozart and his mother departed
on September .
More than his own future rested on the outcome
of this trip, for it was assumed that the entire
Mozart family would relocate with Wolfgang.
is arrangement became clear in his petition to
the archbishop: “My conscience tells me that I
owe it to God to be grateful to my father, who
has spent his time unwearyingly upon my ed-
ucation, so that I may lighten his burden, look
a er myself, and later on be able to support my
sister.” Nothing came of days in Munich. Mo-
zart’s subsequent two-week stay in Augsburg—
his father’s hometown—also produced no pro-
fessional appointment. He fared no better in
Mannheim during a four-month stay prolonged
by the winter weather and his growing a ec-
tion for Aloysia Weber, whose sister Constanze
would later become Mozart’s wife.
Portrait of the Mozart family: sister Maria Anna
(Nannerl), Wolfgang, mother Anna Maria, and
father Leopold by Johann Nepomuk della Croce
(1780–81)
6(PT(0%(R ɰ 6(PT(0%(R
_ R$9,1,$ 0$*$=,1(
107