By Charlotte Smith
Published: Thursday, 14 November 2024 at 17:30 PM
Mozart Sinfonia Concertante: lively, sorrowful, utterly beautiful. A guide to this extraordinary work and its best recordings
Written in 1779 during his time in Salzburg, Mozart‘s Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major, K. 364, is a celebrated work for violin, viola, and orchestra. It’s a fascinating blend of symphony and concerto, featuring the violin and viola as dual soloists in dialogue with the orchestra. Among other things, the Sinfonia Concertante is distinctive for that rich interplay between the instruments. In particular, the viola has some beautifully expressive writing, and is tuned slightly higher than normal (this is known as scordatura) to enhance its brilliance and resonance.
Here’s a guide to the Sinfonia Concertante, Mozart’s lively, sometimes sorrowful, always beautiful concertante work for violin, viola and orchestra. We’ve also got, towards the end of the piece, a selection of the work’s best recordings. Read on for our insightful Mozart Sinfonia Concertante guide.
When did Mozart write the Sinfonia Concertante?
Though only in his early 20s when he wrote his Sinfonia Concertante K364, Mozart already had a very substantial number of works already on his CV. These include nine of his 27 piano concertos, all five of his violin concertos, more than 30 symphonies and a huge body of chamber music and solo keyboard works.
And while big-hitters such as The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni were yet to come, opera featured strongly too. He was also well travelled, having toured Europe widely as a performer from childhood onwards – something that inevitably gave the Salzburg-born composer a certain Wanderlust…
In September of 1777, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, then aged just 21, embarked on a journey to Mannheim by way of Munich and Augsburg in search of gainful employment, accompanied by his mother, Maria Anna. Mozart had recently been released from the services of Hieronymus Colloredo, the Archbishop of Salzburg, whose unpopular attempts to modernise court music practices had long been despised by his father, Leopold.
Despite concerted efforts to curry favour with the great and the good, however, the young composer’s offer of services met refusals in all three cities, and so in February 1778 his father commanded that he travel to Paris, again with his mother in tow.
A tragic setback… and a job offer
The trip was to be a tragic one. In June, Mozart’s mother fell ill and notwithstanding the attentions of doctors, she died on 3 July – an outcome for which a grieving Leopold chose to blame his son in a series of accusatory letters, describing him as idle and careless. A month later, Leopold wrote again to Mozart to inform him that the archbishop was offering the post of court organist in Salzburg and an increase in salary.
Despite the favourable conditions, the offer must have seemed a backwards step to the ambitious young musician, for he dallied for several months, again in Mannheim and Munich, before finally returning to Salzburg in January 1779. Among his new duties were playing in the cathedral, at court and in the chapel, training the choirboys and composing for the court and the cathedral.
Although Mozart did compose several substantial works for the archbishop, including the ‘Coronation’ Mass K317 and the Missa solemnis, K337, it seems that his extra-curricular output was a source of dissatisfaction for Colloredo, who in 1782 appointed Michael Haydn (Joseph Haydn‘s brother, and a composer in his own right) to the post instead. Among the works that Mozart composed between 1779 and ’82 were the Concerto for two pianos, K365, the Symphonies K318, 319 and 338, the ‘Posthorn’ Serenade, and the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, K364.
What is a sinfonia concertante?
Such instrumental music held little value for Salzburg’s court at the time. However, it did reflect the tastes and practices to which Mozart had so recently been exposed on his travels. The sinfonia concertante was a musical form that blossomed from around 1770 to 1830. Paris, particularly early on, was its proving ground.
A modernisation of the Baroque concerto grosso, which also calls for a solo instrumental group and orchestra, the Classical sinfonia concertante places more emphasis on the melodic line and on the soloists, who by this period were expected to demonstrate dazzling virtuosic display. Technically a ‘symphony with important and extended solo parts’, the sinfonia concertante resembles more closely a concerto.
During his 1778 stay in Paris and the following year, Mozart worked on six sinfonia concertantes – one for four wind instruments (K297b), another for two pianos (K365), a concerto for flute and harp in C, a fragment for piano and violin in D, another fragment for violin, viola and cello in A, and the masterpiece for violin and viola, K364 in E flat.
It is impossible to know exactly Mozart’s thoughts and impulses during the work’s composition. However, it is tempting to read into it not only his exasperation at the stifling Salzburg court system, as well as his grief over his mother’s death and his frustrations towards his dictatorial and, at times, emotionally punishing father.
What are the soloists in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante?
Mozart’s interest in the viola emerged around this time and was perhaps, suggests Patrick Mackie in Mozart in Motion, a deliberate attempt to distance himself from the violin, an instrument on which Leopold was regarded as an authority throughout Europe. Certainly, by the mid-1780s, Mozart was playing the viola regularly alongside Haydn in their Vienna quartet.
Mozart had, of course, written five wonderful violin concertos in 1773 and ’75. These he performed himself, as most composers of his generation did. But the addition of the viola in the Sinfonia Concertante, a part that Mozart himself would almost certainly have taken, adds an extra, darker dimension.
What are the three movements of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante?
A strikingly mature composition for a 23 year-old, throughout the work’s three movements – an opening Allegro maestoso, a deeply expressive C minor Andante and a sparkling, virtuosic Presto finale – the soloists engage in subtle interaction with the orchestra and each other. Most themes are introduced by the solo violin, only to be taken up in the viola’s alto tones with a mixture of delicacy and robustness.
Indeed, it is the viola’s range and character that define the work, Mozart playing beautifully on the instrument’s occupation of that middle ground between the cello’s melancholy depths and the bright dexterity of the violin. As such, the two soloists step forward almost tentatively from the orchestral introduction in the opening movement.
Then, throughout, the violin never seeks to school its larger cousin. As Charles Rosen writes in The Classical Style: ‘The very first chord gives the characteristic sound, which is like the sonority of the viola translated into the language of the full orchestra. The first chord alone is a milestone in Mozart’s career.’
It is generally accepted that Mozart composed the work for himself to play with the Salzburg concertmaster Antonio Brunetti. But might he at some point have hoped to perform it with his father, as Mackie suggests? It’s a tantalising prospect for a piece whose origins are maddeningly obscure.
Although we have a sketch for the first movement cadenza, the autograph has disappeared. Yet the piece nevertheless remains to this day the greatest concerto for violin and viola. It is by turns lively, sorrowful and undeniably beautiful.
Mozart Sinfonia Concertante best recordings
Best recording
Vilde Frang (violin), Maxim Rysanov (viola)
Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen
Warner 0825646276776
Following three albums of reliably Romantic fare, Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang finally lent her lean and nimble technique to a recording of Mozart in 2015. The disc followed a 2012 tour of Asia with period ensemble Arcangelo conducted by Jonathan Cohen – their vibrant collaboration in the Fifth Concerto was a musical partnership that both Frang and Cohen were eager to commit to posterity on disc.
We should all rejoice that they did – and even more so that they added to the mix Ukrainian violist Maxim Rysanov in the Sinfonia Concertante, one of the few violists alive today capable of matching Frang’s impish weightlessness and expressive sense of freedom while negotiating his instrument’s more awkward fingerboard.
Of course, the two aren’t tonal and stylistic carbon copies – nor would we want them to be. In the first movement, Frang is both crisp and Classically delicate, but with a warm, Romantic sweetness. Rysanov, on the other hand, is elegant and slightly more legato in his approach, with an underlying groundedness that helps to anchor Frang to this mortal plane.
A joyful account
In the Andante, both players are more indulgent and somehow earthier, wringing every ounce from the movement’s plaintive sensibility. Rysanov makes the most of his instrument’s deeper sonority. The cadenza here is particularly fine, the lines flowing seamlessly from violin to viola and back again. Dynamic control is second to none; the two don’t shy away from barely-there pianissimos.
And finally in the third movement Presto, Frang skips away like some mischievous sprite, with Rysanov hot on her heels, rather wondrously almost matching her agility with ease, while contributing a much needed robustness where required.
Throughout, the wiry, minimally vibrated period sound of Arcangelo feels wholly appropriate to the work’s character and style. Speeds are generally on the brisk side, particularly when compared to a vast array of tempo choices in an even more daunting array of recorded interpretations – from Menuhin and Primrose to the Oistrakhs to Perlman and Zukerman. (For staggeringly indulgent tempos at the opposite end of the spectrum, try Maxim Vengerov and Lawrence Power with the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra in 2006). A sense of stately elegance is perhaps sacrificed in the name of energy and excitement. However, it’s a more than worthy trade-off in this joyful account.
Three more great recordings
Julia Fischer (violin), Gordan Nikolic (viola)
Another brisk interpretation, this 2007 recording from a 24-year-old Fischer and then-London Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Nikolic moonlighting in the viola role, wears its bristling energy on its sleeve from the first propulsive orchestra chord.
Fischer is a sinuous and muscular technician, yet with bags of sensitivity, fine articulation and musical colour. Nikolic matches her at every turn, always attuned and agile, yet with a slightly more relaxed attitude to phrasing. Under Yakov Kreizberg, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra is energetic and unsentimental – in the best possible way. (Pentatone PTC5186098)
Gidon Kremer (violin), Kim Kashkashian (viola)
Back now to 1984, and the glorious pairing of violinist Kremer and violist Kashkashian with a sumptuous sounding Vienna Philharmonic under Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
This is an altogether more expansive interpretation. The large orchestral forces take time to savour phrases and to present the opening material in a bold, stately manner.
When the soloists enter, they are expressive and lyrical, taking their time to sing through every line. In the Andante their fragility plays effectively against the powerful orchestra, held in check by Harnoncourt. The Presto, meanwhile, is pure joy. (DG 413 4612)
Iona Brown (violin), Lars Anders Tomter (viola)
This burnished 1995 version from violinist-director Iona Brown has balance at its core. Balance between Brown and her fellow soloist, viola player Tomter. But also between soloists and orchestra; and between orchestral sections, which are beautifully delineated.
The tempo is majestic, never rushed yet always with a sense of forward momentum. Soloists on other recordings mentioned above may achieve more beauty of tone in the outer movements. However, the central Andante is a tour de force, tapping into a poignant, elemental despair that other, flashier players miss. (Chandos CHAN10507X)