Martin Pearlman, Music Director

Symphony No. 29 in A Major, K. 201 Allegro moderato Andante Menuetto Allegro con spirito

Concerto in Eb Major for two pianos and orchestra, K. 365 Allegro Andante Rondeau: Allegro

Robert Levin and Ya-Fei Chuang, fortepianos

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Arrangements of fugues from Bachs Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, K. 405 Fugue in D minor (orig. in D# minor) Fugue in Eb Major Fugue in C minor

Music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(17561791)

Friday, March 2, 8 p.m.Saturday, March 3, 8 p.m.New England Conservatorys Jordan Hall

Boston Baroque is the resident ensemble forBOSTON UNIVERSITYS HISTORICAL PERFORMANCE PROGRAM

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Mozart, Requiem completion by Robert Levin

Mozart, Flute Concertos & Symphony No. 41 Jupiter

Vivaldi, Four Seasons

Handel, Water Music Suites & Royal Fireworks Music

Handel, Concerti grossi Op. 6

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Tonights pre-concert talk presented by Laura Prichard

Symphony No. 36 in C Major (Linz), K. 425 Adagio Allegro spiritoso Andante Menuetto Presto

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The orchestra is performing on period instruments.

Mr. Levin's fortepiano after Johann Schantz, 1795, made by Thomas and Barbara Wolf, The Plains, VA.

Ms. Chuang's fortepiano after Anton Walter und Sohn, c. 1805, made by Paul McNulty, Divisov, Czech Republic, by arrangement with Harvard University.

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B A S S O O NAndrew SchwartzMarilyn Boenau

H O R NRichard MenaulRobert Marlatt

T R U M P E TJesse LevineRobinson Pyle

T I M PA N IJohn Grimes

V I O L I N IChristina Day Martinson, concertmasterLena WongDanielle MaddonSarah DarlingKatherine WintersteinAmy Sims

V I O L I N 2Julie Leven, principalJane StarkmanGuiomar TurgeonLaura GulleyAnne Black

V I O L ALaura JeppesenBarbara WrightSusan Seeber

C E L LOSarah FreibergAdrienne HartzellColleen McGary-Smith

B A S SDeborah DunhamKaren Campbell

O B O EMarc SchachmanLani Spahr

O R C H E S T R A

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Boston Baroque is the resident ensemble for Boston Universitys Historical Performance Program

MAY 4 & 5 | NECS Jordan Hall

Glucks Orfeo ed Euridice

Owen Willetts, Orfeo; Mary Wilson, Euridice; Courtney Huffman, Amor

Semi-staged and sung in the original Italian, with English supertitles.

Choregraphy by Gianni de Marco

Directed by David Gately

The power of music overcomes grief and the power of love overcomes death itself.

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Final concerts of the 201112 season!

Symphony No. 29

Mozart composed his sparkling Symphony in A, K. 201, early in 1774, about the time he turned 18. He had just returned from a visit with his father to Vienna, where he had heard the latest works of Haydn and others, and the experience seems to have inspired him to write a number of important new works. While this symphony still has a youthful vigor and grace and a wonderfully transparent texture, it is already moving away from the polished entertainment of Mozarts earlier music. With a nervous tension in the first movement themes, the beau-tiful cantabile of the slow movement, and the brilliant finale, this symphony represents the high point in his early symphonic writing. He then abandoned the form for four years, before returning to write the more complex and personally expressive late symphonies.

Concerto for two pianosMozart composed his only concerto for two pianos in Salzburg in 1779, about the same time as another great double concerto, the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola. It is generally thought that he wrote it for himself to play together with his sister Nannerl, although there is no definite record of the two of them performing it. In 1781 and 1782, as the young composer was trying to establish his reputation in Vienna, he chose this concerto, among others, to represent his best work, adding clarinets, trumpets and timpani to make a more brilliant impression on that occasion. (This later orchestration is now lost.) Performing with him in Vienna was his student Josepha Auernhammer, for whom he wrote his sonata for two pianos. In his letters, he seems ambivalent about her playing ([She] plays enchantingly, though in cantabile playing she has not got the real delicate singing style. She clips everything. . .), and he was far less charitable about her looks. Rumors that the two of them were to be married infuriated Mozart but were soon ended by his marriage to Constanze. Our performance of this concerto includes Mozart's own cadenzas and the original orchestration. The two fortepianos are of the type used in Vienna in Mozart's time. They have a light touch, light-weight hammers covered with leather (as opposed to the modern felt), and knee levers to lift the dampers. The piano played by Ya-Fei Chuang is modeled on an instrument Anton Walter, one of whose pianos was owned by Mozart himself. The instrument played by Robert Levin is modeled on one by Johann Schantz, another important Viennese maker from Mozart's time.

Arrangements of Bach fuguesEvery Sunday at 12 oclock I go to Baron van Swietenand there we play nothing but Hndl and Bach, wrote Mozart to his father (April 10, 1782). I am just building up a collection of Bach fugues. . . The Baron Gottfried van Swieten, an important patron of the arts in Vienna, is best known today as the librettist of Haydns oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons, and as the dedicatee of Beethovens first symphony. While an ambassador

P R O G R A M N O T E SBY MARTIN PEARLMAN

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to the Prussian court in Berlin, van Swieten had collected works of Bach and Handel, and he became a champion of this early music on his return to Vienna. At his house, Mozart, Haydn and other musicians were exposed to music of Bach and Handel. They had, of course, known something of these earlier composers before and had studied learned counterpoint, but here was living and breathing counterpoint presented as great music. Several years later, in the late 1780s, van Swieten commissioned Mozart to make arrangements of large vocal works of Handel, including Messiah. These experiences no doubt played a role in the increasing use of counterpoint in Mozarts own music. He made string arrangements of keyboard fugues by the Bach family and began writing some fugues of his own as exercises. Eventually, fugal writing became an integral technique in his personal style, not only in choral music, but also in symphonies and other works. The fugues we play this evening are all from the second book of Bachs Well-Tempered Clavier. Mozart arranged them for strings, presumably for performance at one of van Swietens gatherings. (He did not transcribe the preludes that go with them.) There are only small differences between Mozarts transcriptions and the keyboard originals. Some differences may represent Mozarts improvements, and some appear to be attempts to adapt the music for stringed instruments, but others may well be due to inaccuracies in the manuscript originals that Mozart was using. One of these fugues, that in D minor, is transposed from the original D# minor, by which Mozart not only puts it into a more normal key but also makes it possible to use open strings for more resonance.

Symphony No. 36 (Linz)In the summer of 1783, Mozart brought his wife Constanze to meet his father and sister in Salzburg. They stayed until October and, on their return trip home to Vienna, stopped at Linz, where the Count Thun offered them his hospitality. During his sojourn in the city, Mozart was unexpectedly asked to play a public concert, but, he wrote to his father, as I have not a single symphony with me, I am writing a new one at breakneck speed. . . . Well, I must close, because I really must set to work. Within six days, Mozart evidently composed the symphony, had it copied, andperhapshad at least one rehearsal, all in time for its premiere on November 4. The following April, he presented the work in Vienna. Compared to the earlier Symphony No. 29 on this program, the Linz is in the more serious vein of Mozarts late symphonies. The difference is clear from the beginning, when it opens with a slow, expressive introduction, the first Mozart symphony to do so. We also feel the difference in the second movement Andante, where he calls for trumpets and timpani. While we may be used to hearing these instruments in later slow movements by Beethoven, as well as in a few late Haydn symphonies, it was unusual for the time to include them in gentle slow movements. The brilliant finale is in the spirit of Mozarts previous symphony, the Haffner, in which he asked for the last movement to be played as fast as possible.

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Boston Baroques first recording on our new label, Linn Records (Winner of Gramophones Label of the Year 2010)

Haydns Creation Amanda Forsythe, soprano Keith Jameson, tenor Kevin Deas, bass

a performance full of dramatic contrasts, vibrant colors, and poetic feeling... Boston Globe

Coming this Spring!

37 Main Street, Rockport, Massachusetts

at the shalin liuperformance center

SUNDAY, MARCH 11, 3 PMVassily Primakov, piano

SUNDAY, MARCH 18