The Sinfonia concertante for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K. 364 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was composed in 1779—and is easily the most self-assured concerto the composer had written up to that time. It’s in E-flat major, generally a bold key for Mozart (think of the Symphony No. 39)—and the outer movements are confident and grand. For many, though, the heart of the concerto is the sublime middle movement. As Arvilla Wendland, today’s viola soloist, puts it, “Those harmonies at the opening of the second movement are so dark”—and they are enriched ...

The Sinfonia concertante for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K. 364 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was composed in 1779—and is easily the most self-assured concerto the composer had written up to that time. It’s in E-flat major, generally a bold key for Mozart (think of the Symphony No. 39)—and the outer movements are confident and grand. For many, though, the heart of the concerto is the sublime middle movement. As Arvilla Wendland, today’s viola soloist, puts it, “Those harmonies at the opening of the second movement are so dark”—and they are enriched by Mozart’s decision to write for divided violas (as he does in his string quintets), which “brings so much richness to the inner voices, thickening the harmonies and drawing the listener in.” Not that it’s dark in terms, say, of “tragic things happening”—but the sound is dark, and Arvilla “loves that juxtaposition with all the wonderful lighter characters that come in the rest of the piece.” Today’s violinist, concertmaster Peter Rovit, agrees: “Mozart is usually so sparkling, so when he does plumb the depths it’s all the more affecting.”

The Sinfonia concertante is a true double concerto where, as Arvilla says, “the interactions are seamless” in such a way that the two soloists emerge as absolute equals. “The two solo instruments play exactly the same material, too, except in the cadenzas”—although Mozart takes pains to switch things up. Thus, says Arvilla, “if one plays the first part of a phrase and the other finishes, in the recapitulation it’s the opposite.” If that back and forth reminds you of an “operatic dialogue,” says Peter, “that’s typical of the vocal way Mozart often treats solo instruments. All in all, it’s an especially gratifying piece for our soloists, especially in this context, where they can engage in more subtle interactions with the orchestra than they could playing it elsewhere since, as Arvilla puts it, they’ve “played chamber music with half the people on the stage.” It’s perhaps doubly gratifying for Arvilla, since there’s little music for solo viola in the classical repertoire—and certainly nothing else on this level.

Mozart’s music is a magnet for performers and listeners alike; it’s also a magnet for urban legends. The most familiar—helped along by Pushkin’s play Mozart and Salieri, Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera based on it, and Peter Schaeffer’s play and film Amadeus—is the false story that, while composing his Requiem, Mozart was murdered by his fellow composer Antonio Salieri. But there’s also a belief, slightly less common, that he wrote the Sinfonia concertante to play with his talented sister Maria Anna (known as “Nannerl”). It’s most probably untrue: She was a pianist, not a string player. But it’s easy to see why the myth took hold, since it’s nourished both biographically and musically.

The Sinfonia concertante was composed in 1779, at a slightly bitter time in Mozart’s life, when he returned to Salzburg after a failed attempt to find better employment in Paris. As he put it in a letter to his father, “I cannot bear Salzburg or its inhabitants.” But his return did offer a reunion with Nannerl, whom he hadn’t seen for some time; and at around the same time, he did take advantage of her presence and her piano skills to write a concerto for two pianos for the two of them to perform. (Their relationship did eventually cool, but this was still a key moment in their relationship.) So it’s easy to transfer that story over to the Sinfonia Concertante, too, especially since, as tonight’s conductor, Stephen Mulligan, says, in the Sinfonia concertante itself, “the violin and viola are like siblings.”

Arvilla agrees: “The violin and the viola are so close to exactly the same instrument. It’s very different from how it would be if you were combining two woodwinds.” She also points to “how the voices work together throughout the piece—sometimes they’re working together, sometimes interjecting, sometimes playing together” (a word with multiple applicable meanings). Then, too, Stephen observes, Mozart calls on “sibling-like” ideas: “The same music played on a higher and lower instrument or sung in a higher and lower voice, and pure musical delight in parallel intervals (thirds, sixths) sung by voices close together.”

It’s partly that quality that led him to choose to complement the Mozart with a suite from the 1893 opera Hansel and Gretel by German composer Engelbert Humperdinck (1854–1921), which makes considerable use of the same sibling-like musical ideas. This is a “sibling” opera in two more literal ways, too: the plot, of course, is about a brother-sister pair; and the work was a brother-sister collaboration. It was Humperdinck’s sister Adelheid Wette who initially generated the idea when she asked for some music to go along with a Christmas puppet show she had written; over the years, it grew in scope, eventually developing into a full-length opera, for which she wrote the libretto.

Yet these similarities play out against very striking differences. For instance, in terms of reputation: Humperdinck is one of the handful of composers who composed a single extremely famous work; like Pachelbel’s Canon, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, and Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, Hansel and Gretel has no siblings in the standard repertoire. Mozart, in contrast, probably produced more works that are regularly performed than any other post-Baroque composer.

In terms of style: Mozart is probably the epitome of the Classical style; Humperdinck represents the height of Romanticism. He assisted Wagner at the first production of Parsifal, and may even have contributed a few measures to the score to cover a slower-than-expected scene change; he’s also responsible for the arrangement of Siegfried’s Rhine Journey that’s most often heard on orchestral concerts. And his own music is, in the 19th-century critic Hanslick’s words (not intended as a compliment), “Wagnerian to the core.” Listeners familiar with Wagner may hear allusions to Wagner operas from The Flying Dutchman through the Ring (the Rhine maidens clearly appear) on to Parsifal.

Most important, the Sinfonia concertante is absolute music, while Hansel and Gretel—even the orchestral music extracted from the opera that we’ll be hearing tonight—is programmatic (that is, music that describes something or tells a story). It might seem at first that the particular story elements of the Humperdinck are evidence that it’s music for children—a classification that seems especially marked at this point in our season, since our last two concerts featured Ravel’s Mother Goose and Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals. But as I said in the program notes for those concerts, those are actually sophisticated works aimed at adults as well as at children—and that’s just as true of Hansel and Gretel. Yes, there’s a lot of childlike naiveté (it quotes a couple of pre-existing children’s songs and invents a lot of tunes that sound like folk music—most notably, the “Evening Prayer”), but it’s combined with late Romantic intricacy. Those of you who were introduced to it as children and haven’t heard it since may well be surprised by its depth.

It’s not only sophisticated—it’s bewitching as well. You may suspect that its ability to captivate adult listeners is a matter of nostalgia, but it’s not. In fact, Stephen didn’t know it until graduate school, when he immediately fell in love with it. Mahler considered it “a masterpiece,” and performed it frequently. Stephen agrees, pointing in particular to “its full, beautiful brass. It has some of the most glorious orchestral music I’ve ever heard!”

There’s a further distinction between Hansel and Gretel and most children’s music, especially the Ravel and Saint-Saëns: despite its charm, it’s not a sunny piece, although it is optimistic. Adelheid Wette was apparently shocked by the violence of the Grimm version, and she toned it down; but there’s no getting away from the troubling aspects of this work. For many listeners, its psychological pain—two children suffering from the trauma of being separated from their parents—are foremost. (It’s not coincidental that Freud was just starting to develop his most radical ideas at the time). But for others, especially today, there’s an even more troubling theme in the work: hunger. Hansel’s first entry is a lament about his lack of food; and the famous Lyric Opera production, for instance—originally directed by Richard Jones and revived twice since then—used empty plates as a central visual image to emphasize this theme. Saint Paul’s Syracuse, where this concert is taking place, has a food pantry for the hungry in the neighborhood—and we hope that those of you who are reading these notes before coming to the concert will join the spirit of the opera (and of Thanksgiving, just a few days away) and bring some non-perishable food with you to donate.

Like many fairy tales, this one ends in triumph over adversity: the children, no longer starving, are reunited with their parents. Humperdinck never assembled an orchestral suite from the opera, and several editors have taken on the task. The one we’re playing today, compiled by Omar Abad, doesn’t follow the order of the opera: rather, it ends quietly, not with the jubilant reunion and the rescue of all the entrapped children, but with the most famous orchestral music of the work, the Dream Pantomime at its center—a moment of exquisite peace.

Peter J. Rabinowitz
Have any comments or questions? Please write to me at prabinowitz@SyracuseOrchestra.org