Symphony No. 40 in G Minor
performed Oct 20, 2002

Piano Concert No.20 in D Minor
performed Apr 27, 2003

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) showed such a prodigious talent for music in his early childhood that his father, also a composer, dropped all other ambitions and devoted himself to educating the boy and exhibiting his accomplishments. Between ages six and fifteen, Mozart was on tour over half the time. By 1762, he was a virtuoso on the clavier-an early keyboard instrument and predecessor of the piano-and soon became a good organist and violinist as well. He produced his first minuets at the age of six, and his first symphony just before his ninth birthday, his first oratorio at eleven, and his first opera at twelve. His final output would total more than 600 compositions. Much has already been said and studied in the popular media about Mozart's roguish lifestyle and apprehension of conformity. It was this aspect of his personality that never won him the support of royalty or the church, which, at that time, was critical to any composer's survival. As such, Mozart died young, ill, poor, and relatively unappreciated ... only to become the mostly widely acknowledged orchestral composer in history.

Mozart's last three symphonies appeared in quick succession during the summer of 1788. Mozart was in dire financial straits at the time. Four years previously he had still been a fashionable celebrity, both as a composer and a pianist, but in the meantime Viennese society had "dropped" him completely. The last three symphonies may perhaps have been Mozart's last vain attempt to gain another foothold in the cultural life of Vienna.

Robert Schumann admired Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K.550, for its air of "Grecian ethereal grace." Having no trumpets or timpani and only a single flute (instead of the customary two), the work nevertheless has a peculiarly dark tonal quality. Unlike the monumental C Major Symphony that would follow it, the G Minor is remarkably refined and subtle. There are no serious breaks from form, leaving the distinctiveness of this symphony to the remarkably charming themes and the refined chromaticism that Mozart used in his later compositions.

Stories of Mozart's feats of memory and technique at the piano are so plenteous that we are scarcely surprised to learn that Mozart performed the premier of the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K.466 in Vienna on February 11, 1785, not only without a rehearsal but without having played the rondo finale even once. The concerto would become one of Mozart's most beloved concertos in Vienna and also with modern audiences. In it, Mozart found fresh ways of enlarging the scope of the concerto, primarily though integrating the piano and the orchestra in more vital relationship.