101 Classical Music CDs

Today's CD, a glorious recording of Mozart's Horn Concertos, gives me a chance to share a few thoughts on the miserable difficulties of playing the french horn. ********************** Dennis Brain and the Philharmonia Orchestra Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Mozart: Horn Concertos; Quintet, K.452 EMI Classics, 1954, 1955 ********************** I may be a trumpet player, but I've fooled around with the french horn enough to appreciate how hard an instrument it can be to play. And the french horn is, at its core, an uncontrollable instrument. All it takes is a very, very tiny change in your embouchure (that's a fancy word for the shape and formation of your lips when they're up against the mouthpiece), and you'll play a completely different note from the one you expected to play. And in Mozart's day, brass instruments (including the horn) were valveless. Thus you changed notes entirely by changing your embouchure-- and probably every third note was off...

Today we'll cover three Mozart symphonies, the 30th, the 31st and the 32nd, from a Deutsche Grammophon CD of the Wiener Philharmoniker, conducted by James Levine (remember, he's the guy who keeps allowing himself to be photographed wearing his terrible 1980s glasses ). ********************** James Levine and the Wiener Philharmoniker Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Symphony #30, #31 ("Paris"), and #32 Deutsche Grammophon, 1990 ********************** These symphonies are brief enough that all three fit onto one glorious CD. Unfortunately, I can't find the identical disc on Amazon, so I've substituted a link to an exceptionally high-quality collection of the complete Mozart symphonies below. Listener notes for Symphony #30: 1) Throughout the 30th symphony Mozart repeats entire sections of music, sometime more than once. And what Mozart does in the first movement is particularly interesting: he repeats sections within other repeated sections, creating an i...

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 fin...

I'll tell you a little secret. I resent Mozart. No, I'm not some sort of modern-day Salieri. It's because I used to play the trumpet. ********************** James Levine and the Weiner Philharmoniker Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Symphony #29 Symphony #34 Deutsche Grammophon, 1986 ********************** No trumpet player likes Mozart and Mozart didn't like trumpet players. And the parts that trumpet players have to play in Mozart symphonies heartily show this dislike. Supposedly Mozart's baggage with the trumpet had more to do with the fact that the instruments of that day were valveless and didn't allow for the pitch control or the technical capabilities that his music typically required from other instruments. So he wrote his music they way he did, thank goodness for that. But he always gave the trumpets what we used to condescendingly call "oom-pah parts" (think John Sousa marches and what the french horns have to suffer through in those). And...