Sunday morning: Mozart & Grieg

What are you going to listen to?

This morning hear the deep, special sounds of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and travel with the adventurous Peer Gynt. Let spring come!

The Last Spring

The morning opens with Edvard Grieg's romantic mood piece The Last Spring . This piece, from Two elegiac melodies, is a composition for string orchestra that Grieg completed in 1880. The Last lente is based on the poem Våren by the Norwegian poet Vinje, whose poetry was close to Grieg's heart. In this poem, Vinje describes the beauty of the countryside in spring, appearing after the snow of winter. Like the melancholy Vinje, Grieg, who was plagued by ailments and depressed moods, thought he might see that spring for the Last time.

Mozart

During the time Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was busy composing Le nozze di Figaro, he became friends with the Viennese clarinetist Anton Stadler. Both gentlemen were freemasons and loved the pleasures of the good life including an excellent and preferably large glass of wine. But it was not only the drink and pleasure that bound them together. Stadler was one of the first great virtuosos on the clarinet, an instrument on the rise at the time. He so excited Mozart that he wrote some brilliant works for clarinet. High point but unfortunately also final chord was the Clarinet Concerto that he completed in October 1791, just weeks before his death. What is remarkable, however, is that the work was originally written not just for the clarinet, but for the basset clarinet. Stadler was constantly working to improve the clarinet. One of those experiments was the basset clarinet, a version that was slightly longer than the regular clarinet and therefore could play somewhat lower notes. This instrument never really became popular, so the concerto was subsequently modified in some ways to make it playable on a regular clarinet. It remains to be seen whether Mozart did this himself, or whether a publisher took it in hand much later. Mozart's original manuscript is largely lost, and the clarinet version is known only from nineteenth-century printings. Nonetheless, the Clarinet Concerto is one of Mozart's most beautiful solo concertos, with its pure and gentle character in which a hint of melancholy sometimes shines through.

Peer Gynt

In 1874, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen decided to adapt his dramatic poem Peer Gynt for a theater performance in Christiania (present-day Oslo). At the time, the Norwegian theater tradition relied heavily on operettas and musical plays, and Ibsen realized that his play needed connecting and lively music to be successful. Accordingly, he asked Edvard Grieg to compose suitable music. The play was first performed in February 1876 and was an immediate success. Unfortunately, the performances came to an abrupt end when a fire destroyed all the sets and costumes. Briefly, the play follows Peer, an imaginative and reckless boy who must leave his native village. Seeking grand adventures - and himself - he encounters trolls, sphinxes, palaces and pyramids. But his unbridled ambition eventually leads him into a deep crisis: alienated from the world, the people around him and ultimately from himself.

To give his music a life outside the theater, Grieg composed two suites, known as opus 46 and 55. The flute theme from Morning Mood is still the best known and serves as a recognizable melody for several other excerpts. Another highlight is the final piece, Solveig's Song, full of beautiful, fragile lyricism.

Archive Residentie Orkest / Kees Wisse