Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Concerto-Symphony in E Flat Major for violin, viola and orchestra composed in 1779, belongs to the period of one of Mozart's returns to Salzburg. He was 24 years old and had behind him the bitter but fruitful experience of Paris, the death of his mother who had accompanied him to France and comforted him in the web of evasive protections into which he had fallen, of the disappointment in love for young Aloysia Weber. These sorrows, these passions, as often happens in Mozart, are not directly repeated or paraphrased in his music, even though it evidently fed upon them. If romantic musicians truly search for compensation in life in art, Mozart seems to want to consume his biographical residues in the highest pyres of contemplation and celebration of his torments. This is the case of the Concerto-Symphony for Violin and Viola that has the structure of a true <<double concerto>> before this form became problematic, and it all moves in ideas and instrumentation within a range of affectionate and attenuated colors to which the use of the bass oboes in the second movement and the constant use of the divided violas contribute. The finale is particularly light in the precision of its structural lines in which the solo instruments seem to insert themselves almost inadvertently to then reduce the entire orchestra to themselves as thought it were by natural thinning out. Mozart considered this composition among those suitable for use in his own personal concertizing as a violinist. The current image of Mozart at the piano has unjustly put Mozart's remarkable skill on the violin as well in second place. His father wrote him in 1777: <<You have no idea how well you play the violin. If you would only wish to apply yourself and play it with elegance, with feeling, and with spirit, you would certainly be the foremost violinist in Europe>>. The violin part of the Conterto-Symphony gives besides this, an exact idea of what the violinist Mozart demanded of himself. The ease and singing flow of the phrase, a solid technique, but <<not at all like a magician>> so that those things that perhaps by chance were difficult seemed easy. According to Paumgartner, the two Duets for violin and viola K.423 and K.424 composed at the request of Michele Haydn who had had the order from the Archbishop, and who because of his healt(h) was unable to discharge this task, go back to the summer of 1783 that Mozart passed at Salzburg. However, Duet K.424 is a page of good instrumental effect on the same level as its brother K.423, and the Archbishop believed them to be truly by Haydn. As far as the style is concerned, they can approach the six Quartets though the part of the violin is much more brilliant.