Flute-and-Harp Week, part 2: Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp -- plus two mighty concertante works that bracket it (continued)

The second movement (Andantino) is again played by flutist Patrick Gallois and harpist Fabrice Pierre with the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.

"It was for these two, then [the flute-playing Duc de Guines and his harp-playing daughter], that Mozart wrote the Concerto for Flute and Harp, one of the longest and richest in melody of his concertos. If it does not approach in emotional impact the astonishing and great E-flat Piano Concerto, K. 271 of 1776, it is ideally suited to its sociable purpose. Full of colourful uses of the orchestra as well as of the solo instruments, this concerto is characterised by a touching morning innocence."

-- producer Erik Smith, from his Philips liner note

ABOUT THE CONCERTO

By way of background, here's the portion of the liner note devoted to our concerto by Erik Smith, the highly musical producer of our Philips recording. I think it's worth pointing out that Erik Smith (1931-2004) was the son of the wonderfully musical conductor Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt (1900-1973). And speaking of famous sons-of, the Philips flutist, Claude Monteux (born 1920, and as far as I know still with us), is the son of the great conductor Pierre Monteux.

When Mozart arrived in Paris in 1778, he was repeatedly humiliated by the Duchesse de Chabot, who let him freeze for hours before requiring him to play on a miserable piano to a company of people uninterruptedly occupied in sketching, by the Duc de Guines who failed to pay him for music lessons and compositions, by Le Gros, director of the Concert Spirituel, who ordered compositions and then did not use them, and so on. The final insult inflicted by Paris, and the most serious for posterity, is the fate of most of the major works Mozart wrote there.

[The principal survivors, Smith writes, are the Paris Symphony (No. 34) and the Flute and Harp Concerto. Now he writes about the latter.]

Mozart wrote to his father (May 14, 1778): "I think I have already told you that the Duc de Guines plays the flute incomparably and his daughter, my composition pupil, plays the harp magnifique; she has much talent and genius; in particular an incomparable memory, in that she plays all her pieces by heart and really knows 200 of them. But she greatly doubts if she also has any aptitude for composition, especially in the matter of ideas; her father, however (who, between ourselves, is a little too much in love with her), says that she certainly has ideas -- it is only her silliness for she lacks self-confidence."

Unfortunately, she was proved right. Mozart went on to describe the painful process of trying to induce her to put down an idea of her own. "I wrote down four bars of a minuet and then said to her: 'Look what an ass I am. I've begun a minuet and cannot even finish the first part. Please be good enough to do it for me.' She thought this was impossible, but finally after great efforts something appeared."

It was for these two, then, that Mozart wrote the Concerto for Flute and Harp, one of the longest and richest in melody of his concertos. If it does not approach in emotional impact the astonishing and great E-flat Piano Concerto, K. 271 of 1776, it is ideally suited to its sociable purpose. Full of colourful uses of the orchestra as well as of the solo instruments, this concerto is characterised by a touching morning innocence. It is perhaps a pity that Mozart did not dare to allow the concerto to end piano like the violin concertos, but thought it necessary to add four conventional bars of forte.

The mention of the K. 271 Piano Concerto is a reminder that this "astonishing" (yes, Mr. S, absolutely!) piece had been written the year before in Salzburg by the then-21-year-old composer. It may be the earliest work of his that seems to me to represent the "mature" Mozart without qualification. Of course he would have been in the process of discovering for himself who and what the mature Mozart would be. From Smith's description of his circumstances in Paris, they don't seem to have been conducive to facilitating the process.

ABOUT OUR PERFORMANCES

For the Flute and Harp Concerto, a work I've never made a point of "collecting," we're making do with what I've found in my collection, but I don't think any ap0logies are in order. We've got actual performances conducted by actual conductors, namely those reliable Mozarteans Neville Marriner and Karl Böhm and that special musician Fernand Oubradous, and for music-lovers who like their music stripped of any actual content or emotional substance, we've got an "authentic"-style performance.

Since I'm clearly ill-equipped to advocate for the latter, here's an excerpt from a MusicWeb International review by Dominy Clements of the 2010 British Nimbus issue of a boxed set of the MusicMasters recordings of the Complete Mozart Wind Concertos on Period Instruments (same link), including the performance we're about to hear of the Flute and Harp Concerto:

CD 2 is given over entirely to the flute concertos, of which the Flute Concerto in G major, K313 is arguably the finest. Sandra Miller plays a traverso flute from the period, which has a tone more akin to a recorder than the modern power-flutes we hear in orchestras these days. Unlike a recorder however, the horizontal blowing hole allows for greater flexibility of dynamics, colour and tuning, and Miller’s nicely centred tone rings out over the orchestra with fine projection and excellent intonation, making one wonder why Mozart had such an apparent loathing for the things. . . .

The Concerto for Flute and Harp K299 is justly popular, though I am sure this has as much to do with the wonderful sonorities created by this combination of instruments as with the actual musical material. Once again the soloists are beautifully balanced in the recording, and well matched even though there are no surviving usable pedal harps from Mozart’s time. The instrument used here must come close to what he would have expected to hear, with a marvellous transparency and gentle articulation and resonance played with fine musicality by Victoria Drake.

As for our other performances, we've got three really distinguished Mozart conductors in Fernand Oubradous, Karl Böhm, and Neville Marriner. And, intending no disrespect to our flutists, when it comes to our harpists, even I -- about as far from harp aficionado-dom as you can get -- know that in Lily Laskine, Nicanor Zabaleta, and Osian Ellis we've got three from the elite echelon.

FIRST LET'S LISTEN TO THE INDIVIDUAL MOVEMENTS

There's nothing startling about the form: a robust opening Allegro, a songful slow movement (marked, rather quickishly, Andantino), and a concluding Rondo. We shouldn't be surprised that the period-instrument performance is pitched about a semitone lower than the modern-instrument one, in accord with our understanding of the period standard.

i. Allegro


Sandra Miller, flute; Victoria Drake, harp; American Classical Orchestra (aka Orchestra of the Old Fairfield Academy), Thomas Crawford, cond. MusicMasters, recorded c1996

Claude Monteux, flute; Osian Ellis, harp; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded c1971

ii. Andantino


Sandra Miller, flute; Victoria Drake, harp; American Classical Orchestra (aka Orchestra of the Old Fairfield Academy), Thomas Crawford, cond. MusicMasters, recorded c1996

Claude Monteux, flute; Osian Ellis, harp; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded c1971

iii. Rondo: Allegro


Sandra Miller, flute; Victoria Drake, harp; American Classical Orchestra (aka Orchestra of the Old Fairfield Academy), Thomas Crawford, cond. MusicMasters, recorded c1996

Claude Monteux, flute; Osian Ellis, harp; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded c1971

NOW LET'S HEAR THE COMPLETE CONCERTO

MOZART: Concerto in C for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra, K. 299:
i. Allegro
ii. Andantino
iii. Rondo: Allegro


François-Julien Brun, flute; Lily Laskine, harp; Fernand Oubradous Chamber Orchestra, Fernand Oubradous, cond. EMI, from the French EMI set Mozart in Paris, recorded Oct.-Nov. 1955 (mono)

Wolfgang Schulz, flute; Nicanor Zabaleta, harp; Vienna Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded 1976



The finale (Rondo: Allegro) of the Flute and Harp Concerto is played in the Mormon Tabernacle by flutist Jeannine Goeckeritz and harpist Tamara Oswald, with the Orchestra at Temple Square under Igor Gruppman.

§ § §

I PROMISED A SIMPLE, DIGRESSION-FREE POST, BUT CAN
WE REALLY NOT HEAR MOZART'S K. 271 -- AND K. 364?

I'm still thinking about Erik Smith's liner-note evocation of Mozart's "astonishing" E-flat major Piano Concerto, K. 271, composed the year before the Flute and Harp Concerto. I tried very hard to resist the temptation to toss it into our mix, but I'm afraid I've failed. I've assembled a hybrid performance by three pianists conducting from the keyboard.

Not that the outer movements are in any way inferior, but note particularly the heart-stopping slow movement, which slips into the relative-minor key of C minor and stands with Mozart's (and thus anybody's) most searchingly beautiful slow movements. I can't help wondering if he knew before this that he had such music in him (its soulful depth isn't hinted at in the tempo marking, which is Andantino just as in the Flute and Harp Concerto), and what it might have felt like to discover that he did.

MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat, K. 271:
i. Allegro
ii. Andantino
iii. Rondo: Presto


1st movement: Berlin Philharmonic, Daniel Barenboim, piano and cond. Teldec, recorded January 1991
2nd movement: Camerata Academica of the Salzburg Mozarteum, Géza Anda, piano and cond. DG, recorded Nov. 1968
3rd movement: English Chamber Orchestra, Murray Perahia, piano and cond. CBS/Sony, recorded Sept. 20 and 22, 1976

While I was at it, I couldn't resist assembling a similarly hybrid performance of the glorious Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra composed the year following the Flute and Harp Concerto. Again, along with a grand, engrossing first movement and one of Mozart's most infectious final rondos (though of the compact variety), we have another of his most breathtakingly beautiful slow movements -- again in C minor, and clearly related to the Andantino of K. 271.

Concerning the soloists in two of our recordings, by way of reminder (we actually heard the whole of all three of these recordings in that October 2010 post that included the Sinfonia Concertante): (1) Norbert Brainin and Peter Schidlof were the first violinist and violist of the legendary Amadeus Quartet, and played K. 364 a fair amount. This is the last of at least three recordings they left us. (2) Rafael Druian and Abraham Skernick were the concertmaster and principal violist of the Cleveland Orchestra at the time of the Columbia recording.

MOZART: Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K. 364:
i. Allegro maestoso
ii. Andante
iii. Rondo: Presto


1st movement: Norbert Brainin, violin; Peter Schidlof, viola; English Chamber Orchestra, Sir Alexander Gibson, cond. Chandos, recorded April 1983
2nd movement: Yuri Bashmet, viola; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin and cond. DG, recorded July 2005
3rd movement: Rafael Druian, violin; Abraham Skernick, viola; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Nov. 28, 1963


A CONCLUDING WORD: I haven't dragged in these glorious before-and-after concertante works for the purpose of demeaning the Flute and Harp Concerto. Every composer targets compositions for particular audiences and audience needs, and as Erik Smith says, the Flute and Harp Concerto is "ideally suited to its sociable purpose," which seems to have been about the limit of Mozart's reach in Paris in 1777. Nevertheless, it's pretty clear to me why I return so often to the Piano Concerto No. 9 and the Violin-Viola Sinfonia Concertante and so little to the Flute and Harp Concerto.


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