In 1988, at the age of 14, David Pyatt became the youngest winner of the prestigious BBC Young Musician of the Year competition. Following this success he has embarked on a solo career which has taken him throughout the United Kingdom, as well as to Europe, North America, Canada and Japan. David is a former Principal Horn of both the National Youth Orchestra and the National Youth Chamber Orchestra of Great Britain. He started playing when he was eight, and was taught for four years by Julie Lord before continuing his studies with Frank Lloyd. His recital, concerto and chamber repertoire is extensive, ranging from the works of Telemann, Haydn and Mozart to those of leading contemporary composers.

Please click here for David's full biography.
 

According to an almanac of 1783 Paris had 194 composers, 63 singing teachers, 93 violin teachers, 87 piano teachers, 97 music publishers and 120 instrument makers. Little wonder that Paris, also with a flourishing concert and opera scene and a lively musical press, was considered to be the music centre of Europe, and little wonder that Mozart, still searching for the fame and fortune that the family, especially Father Leopold, craved, wished to go there. 

‘You are in the one place which, if you are industrious, as you are by nature, can give you a great reputation throughout the world... you must turn the coming months to account, both for your own sake and for that of us all’. 

For the first time on his many sorties into Europe, Mozart was accompanied by his mother (Leopold had not been granted yet more leave from his post in Salzburg!). They arrived in Paris on 23^rd March 1778. The stay turned out to be a disaster and much shorter than planned, as on the 3^rd July his mother became ill and died.

The stay had become a calamity well before that. Surrounded by such a strong music scene, the young composer was scarcely noticed and Wolfgang was not up to the ‘marketing’ that was usually in the hands of his father on these visits.

However, he was asked by Jean Le Gros to compose a symphony for one of the famous Concerts Spirituel series on 18^th June 1778. He completed the work on the 12^th and expressed pleasure in the work in a letter to his father but also showed his lack of pleasure in the Parisians! 

‘And to tell you the truth, I don’t much care – the few intelligent Frenchmen who are there will like it. As for the stupid ones, I cannot see that there is any great misfortune not to please them. Still I hope that even these asses may find something in it to give them pleasure.’ 

He was also dismayed at the quality displayed by the orchestra during the rehearsal. 

‘I have never heard anything worse in all my life as they scratched and bumbled through the symphony twice. I left the rehearsal dissatisfied and angry and decided that if the performance went badly, I would go up and take the violin out of the hands of the concert master and conduct it myself’. 

The symphony opened the concert, the performance went well and all the orchestral effects that he had carefully put in to please the Parisians, produced cries and rapturous applause during the performance. He didn’t stay for the rest of the concert: ‘I went right to the Palais Royal, ate a nice ice, said the rosary I had promised and went home.’ 

I  Allegro assai (very quick) – firm chords and a broad upward sweep from the strings opens the movement, followed immediately by a contrasting idea from the violins. This contrast is one of the features of a movement filled with brilliance and power. Mozart had never written for such a big orchestra before and was particularly pleased with the effect of the clarinets, which were not available back home in Salzburg.

*II  Andante – this graceful and elegant music was the original movement  that Mozart took back home with him, even revising it on the way while the other one was published in Paris as part of the symphony. 

There is no usual Minuet as Paris symphonies rarely had them at this time. 

III  Allegro – used to a grand and noisy opening for their finales, the French audience ‘went Sh-h-h at the quiet opening for violins – then came the ‘forte’ –  the clapping that announced this was pleasing’. In contrast to the full orchestral passages, there are delightfully delicate sections for strings and wind including a little fugue based on two rising notes and downward scurry,  but it is the drive and energy of the tutti passages that made the symphony the success it was in Paris. 

*Le Gros scheduled another performance of the symphony for August but asked that Mozart write a different slow movement as the original was too long. Mozart obliged with music more simple in design, but  the composer reflected that it was really the audience’s response that made Le Gros ask for a replacement as, according to Mozart,  they ‘forgot to make such a long and loud noise with their clapping as they did in the first and last movements’.
 

As the son of  Franz Strauss,  the ‘cantankerous’ principal horn player in the Munich Court Orchestra for over 40 years, it is hardly surprising that that particular instrument  was prominent in many of the works of Richard Strauss –Ein Heldenleben and Don Juan to name but two. 

The first of his Horn Concertos was written at the age of eighteen and it was 59 years later that this second concerto appeared, written in the same key as the first and also as three of Mozart’s horn concertos. The second was written in his luxury villa at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria where, having completed his opera Capriccio, he decided that he would compose some ‘wrist exercises for the benefit of his heirs’. For the first time for some 30 years Strauss turned to writing instrumental music ‘without a story to hinder me’. 

I Allegro – after a bravura opening ‘call to attention’ from the solo horn, the music assumes a contrasting, almost ‘autumnal’ quality as the horn takes on a long meandering solo. The orchestra provides a number of lively motifs to maintain the momentum. A slightly slower central section features solos from the clarinet, cello, oboe and flute, whose voices intertwine with the solo horn.

A contrasting passage brings the opening movement to a close and serves not as a summary of what has passed, but more of a link to the slow movement  - II Andante con moto which follows without a break. As in the first movement, solo woodwind instruments are prominent but the solo horn eventually joins in this melodic outpouring. The strings introduce a more agitated idea upon which the solo horn comments from time to time but as the end of the movement approaches, the solo horn takes over the main theme and leads the music to a most tranquil ending.

III Allegro molto – the solo horn launches the final movement, music full of spirit and a very difficult solo part. There are moments of relative calm but on the whole the music is energetic with some unexpected turns. The ending contains an inspiration of which the composer was particularly proud; the orchestral horns join the solo horn in a brief but blazing fanfare before the solo horn ‘tears off to the final bar’. 

‘I have just completed a little horn concerto, the third movement of which has come out particularly well’.
 

The Adagio was written in 1936 as the second movement of his String Quartet in B minor, and it was Toscanini who, in the following year, asked Barber to supply a piece for his coming season with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Barber submitted the Adagio, now arranged for string orchestra, and it was broadcast, along with his ‘First Essay for Orchestra’, in November 1938. 

From a hushed opening, the music grows as if slowly climbing a lengthy series of steep steps. On reaching the top the music pauses and, having gathered breath, considers the beginning of the descent, then fades to a final whisper.

This rapt solemnity has seen the piece used at funerals such as J. F. Kennedy, Roosevelt and Princess Grace of Monaco. Barber was not enamoured of such usage and he became frustrated by the extent to which this short piece overshadowed the rest of his music. 

Aaron Copland’s description of the music sums up the Adagio perfectly: ‘The sense of continuity, the steadiness of the flow, the satisfaction of the arch that it creates from beginning to end.... makes you believe in the sincerity which he obviously put into it’.
 

This is Italy. What I have been looking forward to all my life as the greatest happiness is now begun and I am basking in it. The whole country has such a festive air that I felt I was a young prince making his entry’. 

Between arriving home from Scotland in 1829 and setting off for Italy late in 1830 Mendelssohn’s work on the ‘Scotch’ symphony and The Hebrides overture was interrupted when, as a result of an accident, he was forced to be bedridden for over two months. The overture was ‘finished at last’ on 30^th December 1830.

He wrote home to his sisters on 22^nd Feb 1831, ‘The Italian Symphony is making great progress. It will be the jolliest piece I have ever done, especially the last movement. For the slow movement I have not yet found anything and I think I will keep that for Naples.’ How right he was!  

I  Allegro vivace (quick, lively and sprightly) – the opening movement doesn’t begin – it is launched! Bustling wind chords prepare for one of the longest orchestral themes that Mendelssohn ever wrote at 21 bars. Perhaps it’s only coincidence that the opening notes fit to ‘ITAL-IA – ITAL-IA’. The woodwind then capture the first three notes, turning them into little fanfares. Scales fly up and down, sometimes at the same time. This must be how the bustle and colour of Italy affected the young composer!

II  Andante con moto (fluently with movement) – this is a much more sombre movement and is said to have been inspired by a religious procession seen in Naples. The opening notes have  repeated ‘A’s, the final note of the previous movement, but this ‘plainchant’ expands to take in other notes before the rather doleful music and its pizzicato scales take us very sedately through the streets of Naples.

III Con moto moderato - wisely Mendelssohn puts to one side his favourite Scherzo movement (for it should be here) and takes us back to the 18^th century with a graceful and elegant minuet that Mozart would not have been ashamed to write. The Trio is much more colourful and the mood belongs to the Nocturne from his Midsummer Night’s Dream, which he hadn’t written yet!

IV Saltarello – this old Italian dance has a skipping figure, but for very fit skippers! This, in all probability, is why the symphony’s third movement wasn’t a Scherzo! The two outer movements have excitement enough and three energetic movements would have been too much. A ‘tarantella’ (a dance to cure the bite of the tarantula) appears part way through and, for a while, competes as to which dance will finish this energetic movement first. Listeners may like to work out which wins – or is it a draw? 

In 1832 the Philharmonic Society of London offered 100 guineas for a symphony, an overture and a choral work. In response Mendelssohn started the ‘Italian’, but claimed that the Philharmonic commission pressurised him into not producing a polished work. He was never really satisfied with it and after its premiere in London in May 1833 he soon started on its revision. ‘Writing the ‘Italian’ cost me bitter moments’, but there is little sign of it in its apparently effortless flow. However, he would not allow it to be published and died before he had accomplished the thorough revisions he had in mind for the work. Its German premiere was after his death.

© Barry Sharkey 2008