Skip to main content

Mozart: Symphony #40 and #41

These are two familiar and highly recognizable Mozart symphonies that are an absolute pleasure to listen to, even if you're a retired trumpet player who resents all of the crappy parts he had to play in Mozart symphonies in high school orchestra.
**********************
James Levine and the Wiener Philharmoniker
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Symphony #40 and Symphony #41 (1788)
Deutsche Grammophon, 1990
**********************
Both of these symphonies have what I consider a more typical symphonic structure (compared to, say, last week's Elgar Symphony #2). For example, listen to the opening melody in Symphony #40, and then hear how Mozart massages that melody into various keys, forms and variations throughout the movement.

What's so fascinating about Mozart is his ability to toy with a simple melody--literally to wrap it around his finger and mess with it in ways you'd never imagine--and yet the music still seems so flawless, logical and beautiful.

Four brief final notes:

1) I found (amazingly) an Amazon link to the exact CD that I have in my collection, and I highly recommend this specific recording. It's excellent, bordering on flawless. Also, for anyone interested in getting an encyclopedic collection of Mozart's complete symphonies, I've included a link to a highly regarded collection here (for a surprisingly reasonable price of around $50). See also the graphical link below. Note that I get paid a small affiliate fee for products you might buy at Amazon should you follow these links and make a purchase. Think of it as my tip jar!

2) Mozart's trumpet parts still suck. I don't even hear trumpet parts at all in #40. And #41 is, you guessed it, mostly oompah parts.

3) If you haven't seen the movie Amadeus, rent it. Now. And then come back. Although it exaggerates the relationship between Salieri and Mozart to the point of total fiction, the movie tells a fascinating story about the nature of genius. Oh, and the soundtrack's pretty good too.

4) I hope James Levine gets himself a new pair of glasses. And a haircut.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Does Bach Suck?

It's not often that you see a classical music-related comment that makes you spit out your coffee : "Bach sucks because he was not a true composer. A true composer hears the music before he writes it. Bach composed using a mathematical system of numbers which he tought[sic] his students. After his death one of his students published a book “How to write a menuet[sic] with little or no musical knowledge”. Frankly, the result of his work is not musical, the opening bars always sound musical because he copied someone else’s melody, broke it down into numbers and wrote counterpoint from it. Handel did not even like Bach, because Handel wrote music. Anyone who does like Bach does so because they are told to. For a comparison, listen to music by Frescobaldi, Rameau, or Couperin, then listen to Bach. The difference? Something that is musical throughout the entire piece, and something that is musical for 10 seconds and quickly loses interest." Once I'd finished mopping the co
15 comments
Read more

Why Classical Music Writing is So Difficult to Read

Have you ever read the liner notes of a classical music CD and scratched your head wondering what the heck the writer was trying to say? Or attempted to read a classical music concert review in your newspaper and felt totally illiterate? One of the things that frustrates many people about classical music is its perceived elitism. It's unfortunate, but most of what gets written about classical music only worsens that perception. Most of the classical music writing I see out there--either in symphony concert program books, in concert reviews in major papers like the New York Times, or worst of all in the little essays in the booklets accompanying most classical music CDs--is quite simply terrible. Often, it is pretentiously written, it is full of industry jargon (yes, even the classical music industry has its own jargon), and it reads like an intellectually insecure liberal arts student's PhD thesis. There are a few reasons for this. First, there's the fundamental difficulty
8 comments
Read more

Shostakovich: First Symphony

I can't help it. I just don't like Shostakovich. This is the second time I've tried my hand at a Shosty symphony, after listening to and heartily disliking his Eleventh Symphony . Unfortunately, I felt no emotional connection to his First Symphony either. The music seems random and arbitrary to me--and to be honest, I even caught myself rolling my eyes at a few of Shosty's musical devices. And as I'll show in the listener notes, it's more film score music than symphony. ********************** Leonard Bernstein and the Chicago Symphony Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 7 Deutsche Grammophone, 1989 ********************** Lucky me: I've still got three more of his symphonies left to listen to: his Second, Seventh and Twelfth. A little historical background before we get to the listener notes: Shostakovich wrote his First Symphony in 1925 at the shockingly young age of 18. It was his graduation piece at the Leningrad Conserva
3 comments
Read more