World Premiere: September 12, 1775
Last HSO Performance: March 23, 2013
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings, solo violin
Duration: 24 minutes

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The name of Mozart brings to mind the breathtaking array of compositions he left to posterity. To his contemporaries, however, he was also known as one of the foremost instrumental performers of the day. His masterful piano playing was lauded in Vienna, London, Paris and elsewhere, and his reputation for tasteful virtuosity persisted for several decades after his death. Less known than Mozart’s keyboard ability was his extraordinary talent on the violin. His father, Leopold, was a renowned teacher of the instrument who issued a popular tutor for violin instruction in 1756, the year of Wolfgang’s birth. It was therefore probably inevitable that young Mozart learned the violin early and well, and he displayed it as one of his chief accomplishments when he dazzled the listeners on his first tour in 1763. He was seven. On his debut trip to Italy in 1770 (age fourteen), two of the greatest violinist-composers of the day, Giovanni Sammartini and Pietro Nardini, were so impressed with his playing that they wrote special sets of exercises for him. Back home in Salzburg, Mozart was appointed concertmaster of the Court Orchestra on November 27, 1770, a position he held until moving to Vienna in 1781. Leopold had a justifiably high opinion of his son’s ability, and told him, “You have no idea how well you play the violin. If you would only do yourself justice, and play with boldness, spirit and fire, you would be the first violinist in Europe.” Wolfgang was, however, more interested in the keyboard than in the violin, and he shot back at his father, “When performing is necessary, I decidedly prefer the piano and I probably always shall.” Even Leopold’s argument that, since the violin was the most popular instrument of the time, he could gain greater financial success as a violinist-composer than as a pianist-composer did not sway Wolfgang. After he left Salzburg in 1781, Mozart never picked up the violin again, preferring to play the viola in his string quartet sessions in Vienna.

Mozart’s five authentic violin concertos were all products of a single year, 1775. At nineteen, he was already a veteran of five years’ experience as concertmaster in the Salzburg archiepiscopal music establishment, for which his duties included not only playing, but also composing, acting as co-conductor with the keyboard performer (modern conducting did not originate for at least two more decades), and soloing in concertos. It was for this last function that he wrote these concertos. He was, of course, a quick study at all he did, and each of these concertos builds on the knowledge gained from its predecessors. It was with the last three (K. 216, K. 218, K. 219) that something more than simple experience emerged, however, because it is with these compositions that Mozart entered the age of his mature works. These are his earliest pieces now regularly heard in the concert hall.

Mozart nicknamed the G major “the Strassburg Concerto,” as he noted in a letter of October 19, 1777 to his father after he had spent a day at the Heiligkreuz Monastery in that city. “During the noon meal we had some music,” Mozart reported. “I led a symphony and played Vanhal’s Violin Concerto in B-flat, which was unanimously applauded…. In the evening at supper I played my ‘Strassburg Concerto,’ which went like oil. Everyone praised my beautiful, pure tone.” His sobriquet apparently refers to an episode in the rondo-finale, which he said was based on a musette tune from Strassburg.

The opening Allegro of the G major Concerto is one of Mozart’s perfectly balanced sonata-concerto forms. The orchestral introduction presents at least four thematic kernels: the bold opening gesture; a mock fanfare; a subsidiary melody with long notes in the woodwinds; and a motive with quick, flashing notes in the violins. The soloist enters with the bold opening gesture, and continues with elaborations upon the themes from the introduction. The development is largely based on the subsidiary theme decorated with some rapid figurations from the soloist. A recitative-like passage links this central section to the recapitulation, which, with the exception of the cadenza, follows the progress of the exposition. The slow movement proceeds in sonata form with an exquisite grace and refined elegance that no composer has ever surpassed. The finale is an effervescent rondo.