Winds on Wednesdays: Mozart, Heiss, & Reinecke

W. A. Mozart | from Divertimento in B-flat Major, K. 270

III. Menuetto (moderato) with Trio
II. Andantino
IV. Presto

Musicologists Spitzer and Zaslow in their book Birth of the Orchestra tell us “In the courtly ethos of the 17th and 18th centuries great symbolic importance was placed on eating.  A ruler had an obligation to feed…the entire court. …… Thus, eating at court was both a display and an enactment of hierarchical social order…….the display of wealth and paternalistic obligations were aimed not only at the prince’s own subjects, but at other courts as well.”
        Music was essential to these displays at table - hence the term “tafelmusik” – and was not to be taken lightly by the prince wishing to please.  To a composer however, the divertimentos and serenades that served as tafelmusik often went virtually unheard, as diners talked, laughed and created the commotion common to dinner parties.
       Mozart’s Divertimento K.270, was composed in 1777.  Mozart was in Salzburg with his father at this time and was chafing under the uberpaternalism of the Archbishop Colloredo, who saw Mozart as servant first and artist second.  Lucky are we that this music, which seemed condemned to be muzak in the gallant style, was written by Mozart with such charm and youthful energy.
        The piece is scored for the popular wind sextet (or Harmonie) of 18th century Austrian courts: 2 each of oboes, bassoons and horns.
        Each movement, all in major keys, betrays Mozart’s youth and exuberance.  A lively Allegro molto segues into a Haydnesque Andantino, simple, square-ish and altogether charming.  A menuetto and trio is all lyric conversation and the whole thing sprints to home with a presto marked by soft questions in piano and boisterous answers in forte.                                                                                                         

– Charles Peltz

Personnel

Oboe
Kip Zimmerman
David Norville

Bassoon
Kylie Hansen
Morgan Pope

French horn
Helen Wargelin
Richard Li

John Heiss | Mosaics with Fanfare, for a very large array of flutists (1986)

Mosaics #1 (for a very large array of flutes) was written in 1986. The format of the piece is controlled aleatory music, in which the players are given the freedom to play independent lines while following a predetermined roadmap and a conductor. The result is a canonic cluster of sound masses, resulting in a piece Heiss suggests is made up of “well-defined randomness with a kind of intention.” The piece was inspired by listening to the random sounds coming from space through radio-telescopes. When confronted by total randomness in sound, Heiss imagined patterns emerging from the chaos. Likewise, in Mosaics, the listener is surrounded by random-like gestures which may come to suggest structure or organization in one’s mind. At the behest of fellow flutist and friend Fenwick Smith during the Boston Flute Convention in 1989, Heiss wrote an additional section of music that breaks with the aleatoric form. The new ending, known as Fanfare, is exclamatory music where the flutes play in rhythm moving from unison passages to sonorous chords; a pensive, quiet ending approaches as pitches slowly fade one by one.                     

– Nicolás Ayala Cerón

Personnel

Elena Rubin
Zoe Cagan
Chase McClung
Nnamdi Odita-Honnah
Clara Lee
Javier Castro
Hui Lam Mak
Hyo Jin Jamie Park

Carl Reinecke | from Octet in B-flat Major, op. 216

IV. Finale: Allegro molto e grazioso

Reinecke’s Octet in B-flat Majorwas written possibly at the request of Paul Taffanel for his “Société de musique de chambre pour instruments à vent” in 1892. This romantic work for winds is set in four movements. The final movement, in the key of B-flat and marked Allegro molto e grazioso, is a spinning flute solo with accompaniment, perhaps a nod to the flautist Taffanel. Reinecke uses playful hocketing in this movement, and explores chromatically distant keys in the development, such as G-flat major and D-flat major, before returning to the opening theme in B-flat. Reinecke finishes his octet with a rousing accelerating cabaletta.

Hailing from the Danish province of Altona, Carl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke was a prodigious performer, composer and conductor. He was first trained in music by his father Johann Peter Rudolf Reinecke, a music teacher and critic. Reinecke began composing at the age of seven and had his first public piano appearance at twelve. After moving to Leipzig in 1843 Reinecke studied with Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, and Franz Liszt. He became a professor at the Cologne Conservatory in 1851, later becoming musical director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and professor of piano and composition at the Conservatorium. Some of his most famous pupils include Edvard Grieg, Leoš Janáček, and Isaac Albéniz.

– Nicolás Ayala Cerón

Personnel

Flute
Honor Hickman

Oboe
Anna Devine

Clarinet
Fanghao Xiang
Theodore Robinson

Bassoon
Julien Rollins
Evan Judson

French horn
Alex Daiker
Jenna Stokes