Mozart: Overture to Cosí fan tutte

Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major

Interval

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3, Eroica

A very warm welcome to this evening’s concert.

Cosí fan tutte was a late work for Mozart: written at the grand age of 33, the third opera (after The
Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni) to arise from his great collaboration with librettist Lorenzo da
Ponte. The themes of mistaken identity, fickleness and fiancée swapping were hardly new, but
woven into such wonderful music, Cosí even now can speak to contemporary audiences. The
premise is simple: two friends brag that their fiancées, who happen to be sisters, are incapable of
infidelity. An older, more philosophical man bets that he can prove them wrong in 24 hours and
enlists the help of the sisters’ devious maid to help him in his practical joke. He coerces each young
man to seduce the other’s fiancée, which they do successfully. Although the bet is lost, the
philosopher advises his friends to forgive their fiancées and to learn from the experience. Silly, but
effective.

This overture is full of life, if not of themes: it’s an exciting way to start a night at the theatre: a
demand to take your seats followed by further demands to listen carefully to the restless excitement
that follows. The only reference in this overture to any music in the rest of the opera is the setting of
‘Cosí fan tutte’ from later in the opera: intoned in the suddenly sparse unison notes towards the end
of the slow introduction.

After the overture, we stay with Mozart and we are delighted to welcome Yume Fujise to play his
Fourth Violin Concerto. Remarkably (perhaps not for Mozart), he wrote all five of the violin
concertos in a single year, 1775 when the prodigious composer was only 19. Often forgotten is his
talent for the violin: he was concertmaster in the Salzburg court orchestra at the age of 14, but his
passion for playing dwindled when he move to Vienna (when he often opted to play the viola, of all
things, instead!).

All five of the concertos have the spirit of youth, and even of the baroque: he hadn’t yet discovered
the full range and scope of possibility that lies in the later piano concertos, but they are pieces of
brilliance, immaculate construction and joie de vivre. Even during the 9 months he spent composing
the violin concertos, his style underwent considerable change, and the last three concertos in
particular remain firm favourites. The first movement of the D major concerto begins with an
orchestral introduction featuring a light military rhythm, a figure that Mozart will later use in many
of his piano concertos, but curiously not so much in the rest of this concerto. Instead he keeps up a
fertile flow of melody—gentle and exuberant by turns. Then he mixes them up, sometimes in
complete phrases, sometimes not, so that the listener never quite knows which tune to expect next.

The second movement keeps the Yume busy almost throughout, except for the very opening and
closing bars. The flowing, soaring melody of the main theme exploits the full range of the violin. A
contrasting theme, presented first with a lovely echo in the oboe, also ranges over three octaves to
exploit all the colours of the instrument.
The term Rondeau, applied to the finale, indicates that Mozart is using a French pattern for the
movement in which a graceful and elegant dance-like theme contrasts with other themes in
different meters and tempos. Like the first movement, you never really know what’s coming next
(well, we do). These contrasts might cause such a movement to fall apart, but Mozart balances the
proportions with such skill that they work together brilliantly.

Interval

After the interval, we approach what is undoubtedly one of the great symphonies of all time:
Beethoven’s Third, the Eroica. Why Eroica? Beethoven had intended to name his third symphony in
honour of Bonaparte and his righteous fight against political oppression, but on hearing that
Napoleon had appointed himself emperor, in a rage he scrapped that in favour of this ‘Heroic’
option, so we are told. The themes of idealism and disillusionment, greed and abuse of power, have
often overshadowed one of the most musically revolutionary pieces in the repertoire. Toscanini
famously tried to right this mis-balance: ‘Some say it is Napoleon, some Hitler, some Mussolini. For
me it is simply Allegro con brio.’

Worsening deafness, depression, thoughts of suicide, all of these summed up in the Heiligenstadt
Testament of 1803; this was one of the lowest points in Beethoven’s life, and the composition of a
major new symphony, a heroic effort, was itself a struggle but ultimately an artistic lifeline for him.
He was distraught on hearing that Napoleon had made himself Emperor and tore up the title page.
The accountant in him knew better though; learning that Prince Lobkovitz would pay him
handsomely for such a piece, he had cold feet about the Bonaparte idea (except that in the sense it
would be useful for an upcoming trip to Paris). When it came time to publish, this symphony ‘to
celebrate a great man’ was sufficiently unspecific in its dedication to make the best of all publishing
deals (he had been known to cannily sell the same piece to different publishers, thus maximising
profits).

To the Viennese audience at the first performance, on April 7, 1805, the vast and powerful first
movement and the funeral march that follows would have sounded like nothing else in all music.
Never before had symphonic music aspired to these dimensions. Beethoven’s Allegro con brio was
longer and bigger, in every sense, than any other symphonic movement. The proportions are vast for
the time: Beethoven’s central section in particular, full of monumental statements, is enormous.
Even in the first 14 bars the music veers subtly but wildly, cellos taking the wrong direction, order
restored by the first violins demanding to stay in the home key. Beethoven’s writing, in the most
expansive piece he had yet composed, is still tight and closely unified though. It’s not without
humour, in a music-geek kind of way: the ‘wrong’ entry of the horn just before the opening music
returns fooled even Beethoven’s pupil who rushed up to tell him that the player had come in at the
wrong place.

Beethoven raised some eyebrows by placing the funeral music so early in the symphony, but this is
music, not biography, and chronology is beside the point. The two major-key interludes are
particularly moving—the first because it casts a sudden ray of sunlight on the grim proceedings; the
second, because it carries the single thread of melody into the most magnificent and powerful
outburst. The funeral music eventually gives way to a brilliant and quiet scherzo, even this most
Mozartian movement gets the grand treatment.
Finally to the finale; a set of variations on a theme he had used several times before. It’s not just the
conclusion, but the culmination, of all that came before. A simple, unattached bass line starts
inconspicuously, but what follows is extraordinary variety and range of style: fugues, a virtuoso flute
episode, a dance, a hymn and much more besides. Beethoven moves from one event to the next,
making their connections seem not only obvious, but inevitable. A magnificent coda, still
experimenting even then, ends with bursts of joy from the horns.