MOZART & HAYDN

In Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s day, Carnival enlivened Austria’s winter months over a span of several weeks in January and February, reaching its end with the beginning of Lent. Although we have no record of its early performance history, it is logical to assume that Mozart produced the Serenade in D major, K.239 for festivities such as these. Mozart tosses his material back and forth between the orchestra and a solo group of two violins, viola, and double bass—a standard “Salzburg quartet.”

Written in just four days, Mozart’s Linz Symphony is a grandly inventive work. For the first time, he begins a symphony with a slow introduction, cannily creating suspense. The Allegro is energetic and festive, with a touch of march about it. The second movement is in a major key, but yearns always for minor harmonies. The Minuet is courtly, and the trio, with its delicious scoring for oboe, violins, and bassoon in particular, is demurely rustic. The finale brings back the first movement’s exuberance in heightened form.

Franz Joseph Haydn wrote his Symphony No. 103 during his second tour to England in 1794–5. He had been brought to London by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon after leaving his longtime service to the Esterházy princes. An extended roll on the timpani lends this symphony its Drumroll nickname.

—After notes by James M. Keller and Michael Steinberg