When Mozart began writing symphonies, he was an eight-year-old keyboard prodigy on tour in London, where he played for King George III among other adoring fans. On his previous trip to England, he had met and befriended J. C. Bach, the youngest son of J. S. Bach and a trendsetter in the emerging genre of the symphony. Later, as a teenager back in his hometown of Salzburg, Mozart looked to the example of Joseph Haydn. Some of the symphonies Mozart wrote as a 17- and 18-year-old ranked among his first truly brilliant compositions, and by that time he had already completed three-fourths of his lifetime symphonic output.

Once Mozart set out on his own as a freelancer in Vienna, his busy schedule of performing and teaching left little time or need for new symphonies; most were for special events, like the “Haffner” Symphony for a family friend’s wedding in Salzburg and the “Linz” and “Prague” Symphonies for concerts in those cities. But then his lucrative run of self-produced concerts in Vienna stalled out, and his income from opera productions faltered. There were hungry mouths to feed in Mozart’s growing family, and he was going broke.

We don’t know exactly what opportunity prompted Mozart to write the three symphonies that turned out be his last in the summer of 1788—but whatever it was, it didn’t pan out. He must have at least found some use for the Symphony No. 40, based on a later rewrite (performed at these concerts) that added clarinets.

The symphony’s first movement begins with a peculiar and essential quirk of phrasing that assigns the violas to quiver through one measure of bare accompaniment. When the violins enter a moment later with a theme that sighs three times before leaping up, there is a subtle rub between what our ears hear as the strong beat and the underlying architecture of the phrase. The result is a persistent and restless feeling of propulsion, as if each phrase must scrabble forward to stay ahead of the surge.

The Andante second movement is the only portion of the symphony that moves away from the turbulence of G minor, and even here patterns of hiccupping rhythms and delayed resolutions echo the stormy first movement. The Menuetto is unusually grave for the portion of a symphony that often serves as a palate-cleanser, with respite only coming in the contrasting trio section. The finale, with its heated dialogue of soft and loud phrases, embodies the passion and drama that Mozart honed on the operatic stage, most recently in Don Giovanni. The leaping arpeggio that launches the main theme borrows a trick that Mozart had picked up years earlier in the orchestral hotspot of Mannheim, Germany—a signature flourish known as a “Mannheim rocket.”

Flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, strings