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Listen to Mozart |
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Browse our selection of some of Mozart's most popular orchestral works, and read notes about the music whilst you listen. They have been recorded by some of the BBC orchestras.
This symphony was recorded by the BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Rumon Gamba.
After his three journeys to Italy, Mozart remained for four years in Salzburg, where he must have found life very quiet after the attention he received on tour.
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The new Prince-Archbishop, Colloredo, appointed Mozart to the salaried post of Court conductor (he had previously held the post as an honorific). Mozart's father Leopold took his son to Vienna in the hope of securing an appointment at the royal court; Empress Maria Theresa had been well disposed towards the wedding serenade, Ascanio in Alba which Mozart had written; but they returned to Salzburg disappointed. Wolfgang Amadeus, however, must have found himself stimulated by Viennese musical life - a number of fine symphonies resulted, culminating in No.29.
The Symphony No.29 in A major, K201, has become the best-known of Mozart's earlier symphonies. It dates from 1774. In this work, and in the G minor and C major symphonies from the same period, Mozart speaks with a voice of complete individuality: he has paid off all his debts to earlier symphonists.
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The first movement opens unassertively, with a gentle sequential theme, but this is transformed as soon as the wind instruments enter into music of power and passion. The same theme provides the basis of the finale's hectic material, giving the work an unusual unity. The slow movement is eerily remote, with violins muted almost throughout. The minuet is quite old-fashioned, with strong dotted rhythms. The whole symphony is among Mozart's tightest structures.
Programme note © BBC
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