Symphony Preview: Sous le ciel de Paris

This weekend (November 15 and 16) Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the second of two programs devoted almost entirely to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). It’s all Mozart all the time—except for the 12 minutes or so that will be Anna Clyne (b. 1980).

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

An English-born composer now residing in the USA, Clyne’s name is one that should be familiar to SLSO regulars. The orchestra has played a number of her works over the last decade or so, usually to appreciative (and well-deserved) applause. In fact, the Clyne work we’ll hear this weekend was the first of her compositions that the SLSO played.

That work is “Within Her Arms” for string orchestra. Written as an elegy for the death of the Clyne’s mother in 2008, the piece is (as I wrote back then) a kind of memory play. Its somewhat mysterious music, which at times seems to harken back to Vaughn Williams or even Thomas Tallis, rises from a whisper to a roar before finally fading away, slowly, into nothingness. “The rest,” as Hamlet says, “is silence.”

Anna Clyne Photo by Christina Kernohan courtesy of the SLSO

“Within Her Arms” is the only work on the program that’s missing from the SLSO’s Spotify playlist. Which is a bit surprising since there’s quite a splendid performance of it there by the adventurous chamber orchestra The Knights. When you listen to the SLSO’s playlist, just pause it and play “Within Her Arms” right before Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 (“Paris”) for the full effect.

The concerts open with Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major, K. 16, penned when Mozart was eight years old and known primarily as a piano prodigy. It’s a modest and charming three-movement piece that sounds more like work of Johann Christian Bach (1735–1782) than Mozart. Still the somewhat enigmatic second movement does include, according to the anonymous program annotator for the Kamuela Philharmonic Society Orchestra, “a four-note motif that also appears in several later Mozart compositions, including his Symphony No. 33, and the finale of his Jupiter Symphony.” And it does end with a jolly little Presto.

Up next is the more substantial Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466. It was, I believe, last presented by the SLSO in 2017, at which time I described it as engrossing, menacing, and filled with the kind of high drama that audiences would come to love so much in the ensuing decades of the 19th century. Beethoven, for one, loved this concerto, performing it often and composing two cadenzas for it, Mozart's own having been lost to history. It is, in fact, sufficiently "modern" for its time that Viennese audiences might have been put off by it, had it not been the work of a man who was at the peak of popularity.

Mozart, age 6 Painter unknown

The soloist this weekend will be the talented young (born in 1990) pianist Behzod Abduraimov. I last saw him in 2018 when he played the Grieg Concerto with Gemma New on the podium. At the time, I praised the ideal mix of technical flash and sensitivity in his performance. Which bodes well for this weekend.

Next, it’s the overture to Mozart’s early opera “Mitridate, re di Ponto” (“Mithridates, King of Pontus”), which is filled with engaging tunes that belie the work’s tragic finale. First performed at the Teatro Regio Ducale in Milan, it was something of a hit despite the fact that the composer was only 14. Mozart’s more mature operas have overshadowed it since then and revivals are rare.

The concerts will close with the Symphony No. 31 in D Major, K.297 (300a) ("Paris") composed in the City of Light in June, 1778. Mozart and his ailing mother Anna Maria had arrived there after a concert tour in search of additional professional opportunities, but the pickings were slim, and the pair soon found themselves in debt. The arrival of a commission for a new symphony from Jean LeGros, the director of the high-profile Concert Spirituel, was therefore a welcome development.

The audience at the symphony's June 18th public premiere was enthusiastic, if Mozart's account is accurate. The work was interrupted by applause several times (both between and within movements) and the composer was ebullient. "I was so happy," he wrote to his father, "that as soon as the symphony was over, I went off to the Palais Royal, where I had a large ice, said the Rosary as I had vowed to do—and went home.”

His joy was short-lived. Although Anna Maria was at first invigorated by the weather and the attentions of old friends like the tenor Anton Raaff and horn player Franz Joseph Heina and his wife, even small outings tired her out. A day at the Jardin du Luxembourg with the Heinas on the 10^th left her exhausted and her health began to worsen.

Behzod Abduraimov Photo: Evgeny Eutykhov courtesy of the SLSO

As Mozart scholar and conductor Jane Glover relates in “Mozart’s Women” (Harper-Collins, 2006), by June 26th the situation was grave enough that Mozart “was told that she should make her final confession, which she did on the 30^th. At 10:21 on the evening of 3 July, with a nurse and Heina and her beloved Wolfgang beside her, Anna Maria died.” She was only 58.

You won’t hear any of the mental anguish Mozart must have felt as he watched his mother’s health deteriorate, though, in this vigorous and graceful three-movement work. Instead, you hear the Parisian sunshine and revel in the composer’s use of what the BBC’s Tom Service calls “the biggest orchestra Mozart had used in a symphonic context.” Service’s article includes an excellent analysis of the piece, in fact, and I highly recommend it as a bit of pre-concert reading.

The Essentials: The SLSO’s Mozart celebration concludes this weekend (Friday and Saturday, November 15 and 16, at 7:30 pm) with Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major, Symphony No. 31 (“Paris”), and Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466. Behzod Abduraimov will be the soloist. Performances take place at the Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Saturday’s concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.