Program Booklet

Sunday morning: Mozart & Haydn

Sunday, April 7
11:00 hour until approximately 12:15 p.m.

Easy Sunday mornings are meant for music. Sit back, relax and enjoy Mozart's moving, inspiring Sinfonia Concertante.

Programme

What are you going to listen to?


Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 's career in Salzburg, in the service of the archbishop, was marked by tensions back and forth. In the Austrian provincial city, he was given few freedoms to develop, and after yet another clash, Mozart was fired. In 1777, hoping for a better appointment, he left with his mother on a trip to Mannheim and Paris, two prominent cities in European musical life.  

For several decades, the orchestra in Mannheim was considered among the best orchestras in the world, with its own style of playing and all kinds of orchestral innovations such as the many dynamic shades between hard and soft, driving crescendos with trills in the orchestral parts, or swift figures upward like the "Mannheim rocket. Mozart absorbed all these original ideas, but a permanent appointment in Mannheim or Paris was out of the question. 

Very popular in Paris was the so-called "sinfonia concertante," a work for two or more solo instruments and orchestra. Mozart also wrote similar compositions here for the combinations flute-harp or violin-viola-cello, and on his return to Salzburg he began his Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola. Both solo instruments are equal and enter into dialogue with each other like opera characters. The viola soloist had Mozart tune all the strings a semitone higher for a different kind of sound, but this is rarely done today. 

The work full of Mannheim rhetoric stands out for its unusual orchestration. With two viola parts in the orchestra, the music has a rich color palette in the middle register. Different themes and rhythmic motifs are always connected in the Sinfonia concertante. This was probably the advice Mozart received in a letter from his father. "Good composition, sound construction, il filo - that distinguishes the master from the tinkerer." The thread connecting all musical elements ("il filo") is the key word and we also observe it in Haydn's late symphonies. 

Haydn

Shortly after the Sinfonia concertante, Mozart broke with his employer in Salzburg for good and settled in Vienna, where he met Joseph Haydn. As a viola player, Mozart played string quartet with his musical role model. For Haydn, periods in Vienna were welcome times for inspiration, for much of the year he was at the country home of his breadlord, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy in remote Eisenstadt. 

After his death in 1790, Haydn left for Vienna with a good pension to consider his future. Thanks to contacts with the impresario Johann Peter Salomon, he embarked on the adventure of performing his music in London as well. It became a resounding success. Having performed six symphonies (Nos. 93-98) during his visit in 1791, Haydn traveled again to the British capital three years later. 

Haydn thoroughly researched the musical tastes of the London public, studying their literature, reading reviews and listening to their favorite artists. On this basis, he carefully shaped his six new London symphonies according to British preferences. In cultural high society, Haydn was embraced as the "Shakespeare of music. 

For example, he discovered that major resonated better than minor, and musical jokes such as an unexpected timpani strike or an imitation of a bell also did well in London. Haydn's Symphony No. 104 has been called the highlight of the London series. How the simple opening theme is used optimally to build all the other musical material from it later became a model of classical compositional technique in its utmost perfection. 

In the finale, he incorporated a popular tune over a bagpipe-like bourdon tone. Possibly the Londoners recognized in it the sales cries sung in the marketplace, but more likely Haydn used a Croatian folk song popular in the Eisenstadt area. Perhaps Haydn deliberately kept it in the middle. 

Frans Boendermaker 

Prefer it on paper? Download a condensed printable version of this program.

Biographies

Residentie Orkest The Hague
Orchestra
The Residentie Orkest has been setting the tone as a symphony orchestra for nearly 120 years. We are proud of that. We have a broad, surprising and challenging repertoire and perform the finest compositions.
Jan Willem de Vriend
Conductor
The well-known Dutch conductor Jan Willem de Vriend is chief conductor of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, among others.
Maria Milstein
Violin
The winner of the prestigious Dutch Music Prize (2018) has soloed with several leading European orchestras and is part of the Van Baerle Trio.
Hannah Strijbos
Viola
Hannah Strijbos has been Principal viola with the Residentie Orkest since 2017 . Plays regularly as a guest leader with other orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra and is part of the Berlin-based Jacques Thibaud Trio.
The Residentie Orkest offers the conductor and soloist at this concert a linocut by The Hague artist Mariska Mallee.

Fun Fact

The Mozart in love

The trip to Mannheim and Paris did not end in triumph for Mozart. In both cities he was barely given commissions, fell in love with the beautiful singer Aloysia Weber, sister of his later wife Constanze, who rejected him, and to make matters worse, his mother died in the French capital. Is that why the Andante from Mozart's beautiful "Sinfonia concertante" is so plaintive?

RO QUIZ

Where in London did Haydn's Last symphony premiere?
  • King's Theatre

    Good answer: King's Theatre

    When Haydn made preparations to travel back to Vienna in 1795, they organized a farewell concert at London's King's Theatre. There, under Haydn's direction on May 4, the symphonies Nos. 100 (nicknamed "Militaire") and 104 were performed. The concert was a huge success and Haydn earned well from it. In any case, London was a huge source of income for Haydn. In one year he earned as much as twenty years at the court of Esterházy.

    The King's Theatre, which had a hall for opera as well as concerts, burned down in 1867. The new theater was obsolete within thirty years and was replaced in 1897 by the still existing His Majesty's Theatre. It has been home to the musical The Phantom of the Opera since 1986.

  • Royal Albert Hall

    Good answer: King's Theatre

    When Haydn made preparations to travel back to Vienna in 1795, they organized a farewell concert at London's King's Theatre. There, under Haydn's direction on May 4, the symphonies Nos. 100 (nicknamed "Militaire") and 104 were performed. The concert was a huge success and Haydn earned well from it. In any case, London was a huge source of income for Haydn. In one year he earned as much as twenty years at the court of Esterházy.

    The King's Theatre, which had a hall for opera as well as concerts, burned down in 1867. The new theater was obsolete within thirty years and was replaced in 1897 by the still existing His Majesty's Theatre. It has been home to the musical The Phantom of the Opera since 1986.

  • Wembley Arena

    Good answer: King's Theatre

    When Haydn made preparations to travel back to Vienna in 1795, they organized a farewell concert at London's King's Theatre. There, under Haydn's direction on May 4, the symphonies Nos. 100 (nicknamed "Militaire") and 104 were performed. The concert was a huge success and Haydn earned well from it. In any case, London was a huge source of income for Haydn. In one year he earned as much as twenty years at the court of Esterházy.

    The King's Theatre, which had a hall for opera as well as concerts, burned down in 1867. The new theater was obsolete within thirty years and was replaced in 1897 by the still existing His Majesty's Theatre. It has been home to the musical The Phantom of the Opera since 1986.

Good answer: King's Theatre

When Haydn made preparations to travel back to Vienna in 1795, they organized a farewell concert at London's King's Theatre. There, under Haydn's direction on May 4, the symphonies Nos. 100 (nicknamed "Militaire") and 104 were performed. The concert was a huge success and Haydn earned well from it. In any case, London was a huge source of income for Haydn. In one year he earned as much as twenty years at the court of Esterházy.

The King's Theatre, which had a hall for opera as well as concerts, burned down in 1867. The new theater was obsolete within thirty years and was replaced in 1897 by the still existing His Majesty's Theatre. It has been home to the musical The Phantom of the Opera since 1986.

Today in the orchestra

Alexandra Bons

First violin

Gideon den Herder

Cello

Roger Cramers

oboe
Help The Hague get music!

Support us and help reach and connect all residents of The Hague with our music.

View all program booklets

Are you in the audience?

Be considerate of your neighbors and turn down your screen brightness.