At A Glance
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