Mozart, Divertimento in D major, K 136

 
In December 1771, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was back in Salzburg after his second four-month trip to Italy in the company of his father Leopold. The reception and the music commissioned were a success, but the main effort, aimed at securing a place for Amadeus at a respectable court, had not born fruit.

The last attempt had been nearly embarrassing, although the Mozart family never knew the details. Maria Theresa of Austria, mother of the first queen to meet the guillotine, Marie Antoinette, and of Archduke Ferdinand, governor of Lombardy, even jealously instructed the latter not to hire that family of musicians who were "rolling around the world like beggars".

As usual, Wolfgang was not deterred from his excellent willingness to work, and in the first months of 1772, he had already composed the three divertimentos K. 136-138, also known as the "Salzburg Symphonies", since Mozart set them up in three movements, typical of the "Italian" symphonies: fast - slow - fast.

Divertimenti: "Ambient Music" in the 18th Century

Divertimenti usually consisted of more than three movements, generally five, in some cases adding up to nine, as a remnant of the fading suite, the musical form from which the divertimenti appear to have originated.

Very popular in the 18th century, there are divertimenti for ensembles of three, four or five stringed or wind instruments, or some combination of them. Light in character, its purpose was no other than entertainment, a piece of pleasant background music while talking about state affairs, or blabbering about some petty palace intrigue.

Divertimento in D major

The work we are listening to is the Divertimento in D major K. 136, for string quartet or orchestra (or, "Salzburg Symphony No. 1"). It is the most popular of the three already mentioned. An essential piece in the modern chamber repertoire, a Russian conductor used to place it at the beginning of his concerts because "it is like offering a glass of champagne when the guests arrive".

The notation K. 136, according to Ludwig von Köchel's catalog (1862), states that this composition is preceded by no less than 135 opus numbers. These include about twelve operas and masses, and some twenty symphonies. Wolfgang Amadeus, at the time, was sixteen years old.

Movements: Allegro - Andante (4:17) - Presto (10:07).

The rendition is by the American chamber ensemble New York Classical Players, made up of young talents who use to give free concerts in the New York metropolitan area.

Lepo Sumera, "Piece from the year 1981"

In the late 1980s, the Estonian-born contemporary composer Lepo Sumera was strongly attracted to electroacoustic music and, seduced by the genre, decided to found the Electronic Music Studio at the Estonian Academy of Music in 1995, which he directed until 1999.

One of his best-known works in this genre is the multimedia work Heart Affairs, from that same year, which made use of the sounds of a human heart treated electronically. The performance was accompanied by images of echocardiograms, some of his own heart, which apparently never worked properly, as Sumera died the following year, precisely as a result of heart failure.

Works
Born in the Estonian city of Tallinn in 1950, Sumera came to public attention in 1972 with his work In Memoriam, an orchestral tribute to his teacher and compatriot Heino Eller. After postgraduate studies at the Moscow Conservatory, he finished the composition of six symphonies, three concertos and numerous vocal and chamber works, which have been performed by numerous orchestras in North America and Europe, as well as Australia and Cuba.

Lepo Sumera (1950 - 2000)

The commitment
Sumera is one of the few musicians who have added to their creative activity the concern and militant commitment to the society in which they live. During the years of Estonian independence from the late Soviet Union, the composer took an active part – albeit with the utmost diplomacy – in the so-called "Singing Revolution", while serving as Minister of Culture of his country.

"Piece from the year 1981"

While the modern orchestra was his primary medium of expression, during 1981 he composed two crucial pieces for solo piano, which he titled simply Two pieces from the year 1981. The first of these, even more simply, is entitled Piece from the year 1981.

The minimalist piece weaves a simple melody that is gradually enriched over a bass accompaniment as ostinato as it is hypnotic. Sumera held this work in high esteem as he would use it as the basis for his First Symphony of the same year.

The rendition is by the Estonian pianist Kadri-Ann Sumera, daughter of the composer.

Franz von Suppé, Light Cavalry Overture

 
As happened with a good number of musicians in the 19th century, the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz von Suppé first had to study law to please his father, before taking the bumpy road of music. But, after all, this was not such for the prolific author of nearly thirty operettas and almost two hundred compositions for various theatrical genres that were warmly applauded by Viennese audiences for almost half a century.

In Vienna

After the death of his father in 1835, his mother, who had not forgotten that in his childhood little Franz had shown great musical promise, took him with her to Vienna, where he obtained an honorary position as conductor at the Theater an der Josefstadt. In 1845 he moved to the historic Theater an der Wien, where he remained for almost twenty years. His last active years were spent conducting ballets and vaudevilles at the Carltheater in the suburbs of Vienna.

Light Cavalry

Although widely recognized in his time, Franz von Suppé is remembered today mainly for a handful of overtures. Among them, The Poet and Peasant and perhaps the most famous of all, the overture to Light Cavalry, deservedly stand out. The latter, an operetta in two acts with a libretto by Karl Costa, was premiered at the Carltheater on March 21, 1866.

Franz von Suppé
(1819 - 1895)

The plot

The play tells the love story between Vilma, a beautiful young orphan raised by Hungarian villagers, and Hermann, whose uncle the mayor, an old man, also wants her even though Vilma is in his past lightcone. Only the ingenious tricks of a group of hussars – the Hungarian light cavalry – stationed in the village, will make possible the happy union of the young lovers.

The operetta is no longer performed today, but the overture's main theme has been widely used to accompany scenes of "galloping to the rescue of anything" in cartoons, television shows and various advertisements.

The rendition is by The Cleveland Orchestra, under Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Möst.

A majestic fanfare opens the overture. The famous tune is heard at minute 2:28.

Felix Mendelssohn, Wedding March

 
Felix Mendelssohn came into the world in Hamburg on February 3, 1809, a year before his colleagues, Chopin and Schumann. The beautiful woman who accompanies these lines is his wife, Cécile Jeanrenaud, whom he met in Frankfurt in 1836 and with whom he fell madly in love upon seeing her. It took him only a year to take her to the altar, in 1837, when Felix was twenty-seven years old and Cécile, nineteen.

Such diligence and promptness may be due to the fact that by that time Mendelssohn was already a successful composer who, if necessary, could even count on the prompt financial assistance of his father, a successful banker, if he fell out of favor with the public. Cécile, more reserved, was the daughter of a Protestant pastor of Swiss origin who had managed to settle comfortably in Frankfurt.

Cécile was beautiful, cultured and elegant, although somewhat conventional. She would have loved to have had magnificent music accompanying her as she entered the Wallon Church in Frankfurt on the pastor's arm, but her husband's famous Wedding March did not yet exist. It would be composed five years later. Of course, they could have used Mozart's wedding march from The Marriage of Figaro, but it was not customary to perform wedding marches off stage.

The tradition of accompanying the wedding ceremony with a march was inaugurated somewhat later, in 1858, on the occasion of the wedding of Princess Victoria of Saxony with Frederick III of Germany. At the time, the princess chose two marches: the Mendelssohn piece and the wedding march of Wagner's opera Lohengrin, premiered in 1850. Since then, the tradition has remained firm, with Mendelssohn's work sweeping the preferences.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Wedding March
The hugely popular Wedding March is a piece from Mendelssohn's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, composed as incidental music to accompany the production of Shakespeare's play of the same name. Except the Overture, written when Mendelssohn was seventeen, the music was composed in 1842, at the request of Frederick William IV of Prussia.

The march is one of the five purely instrumental pieces, which together with the vocal sections, make up the fourteen pieces of the complete work.

Of its slightly less than five minutes of duration, only the first minute is played in the ceremony. In the original version, the famous motif is taken up again later on, although this time with a harmonic variation (4:09) that will lead to its conclusion.

Mozart, The Magic Flute – Papagenos duet

In November 1793, the mother of Goethe, the German poet, had the opportunity to appreciate the enthusiasm that the performance of Mozart's Magic Flute aroused in the population of Frankfurt. Her impression, somewhat picturesque, was registered in her diary:

"Nothing new to note here, other than that The Magic Flute has been performed eighteen times and that every night the hall was full to the rafters. I don't think there is anyone who would dare to confess that he had not seen it. All the workers, the gardeners, and even the people of Sachsenhausen, whose children spend the day idle, queue up. Nothing like it has ever been seen before. The theater opens every day at four o'clock, yet hundreds of people are left without a place. They have made a lot of money!"

None of this Mozart saw, of course. He had died two years ago.
But how he would have loved to live it!

Schikaneder, as Papageno.
Ignaz Alberti engraving

Two years earlier, the premiere
On the day of the premiere in Vienna, September 30, 1791, the audience was somewhat cold at the end of the first act. Only for the second and final act did it manage to cheer up, giving a warm welcome to this "implausible magical tale full of fantasies", in Goethe's opinion. However, Mozart was left with the feeling that instead of the music, the audience was celebrating the spectacular staging by Emanuel Schikaneder – author of the verses, the idea, impresario, singer and the one in charge of playing Papageno, the "bird catcher" of the Queen of the Night.

Papageno
Of course, the ordinary public – Goethe's mother reminds us – could not remain indifferent to the fresh joviality of this "supporting actor", assistant to the protagonist Tamino who must rescue the princess and daughter of the Queen of the Night, kidnapped by a sinister character. For this purpose he has a flute –magical, by the way – and the invaluable help of this half-man, half-bird being, who supplies the Queen of the Night with birds in exchange for food.

Papageno - Papagena duet. A candid hero, Papageno, celebrates that Tamino falls in love with the princess at the mere sight of her portrait. And he wonders when love will inflame his own life; if there will be a Papagena. Apparently, there is one, but on the occasion, he loses her. At the end of the play, after many twists and turns, they meet again. This time it is for good. Papageno and Papagena will be one and will create a whole brood of little Papagenos and little Papagenas. That's what they sing.

The video begins with the last lines of the previous aria. As Papageno, the German baritone Detlef Roth. In the role of Papagena, the French soprano Gaële Le Roi.