Mozart’s Last Three Symphonies

Usher Hall 29/1/26

Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Maxim Emelyanychev conductor

This was a triumphant night for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Maxim Emelyanychev. On a bitterly cold January evening, a very well attended Usher Hall was held in rapt attention through three full-length symphonies: the last finished at 9.40, and after five minutes cheering, the conductor struck up an encore of the last three minutes of No 41’s finale.  For SCO regulars, who’d had this in their diaries since last March, this was, as expected, an extraordinary performance. And it was lovely to speak to someone who’d bought her ticket in the morning describe the experience as ‘completely mesmerising.’

Mozart’s final symphonies are an important part of SCO’s history, their 2007 award-winning recording with Charles Mackerras, praised for its mix of period and modern instruments. Many of the audience own a copy, and six musicians onstage tonight, as well as others who still play with the orchestra, are named on the CD. An ‘Amadeus’-like myth hangs around the composition of the symphonies. Without a commission, Mozart wrote them concurrently in a phase of intensive writing in summer 1788. David Kettle gives a full account in the programme notes. In 2014 Nikolaus Harnoncourt speculated that Mozart saw the 12 movements as a “super-symphony”, with the solemn opening of 39 and the long finale of 41 the suitably celebratory start and close, and the quiet closing bars of 39 and 40, and the less formal openings of 40 and 41 contributing to the theory.  Perhaps - but the accompanying notion that a busy composer in his thirties was more than usually perturbed by the fear of death and was laying down his legacy, probably not!

 ‘Every performance is different’ Emelyanychev said at his earlier talk,  and the key to tonight’s brilliance is the collaboration between conductor and orchestra in the immediacy of their response to the music. The programme lists 42 musicians, with 40 required in Symphony No 39 in E-flat Major. This was the first symphony in which Mozart used clarinets, a favourite new instrument. Guest principal clarinet, Cristina Mateo Sáez and SCO sub- principal William Stafford are the two clarinettists and they get special applause at the end. Three basses take what’s become  their customary position at the back of the stage (congratulations to Jamie Kenny on his promotion to Principal Bass). The horn players and the trumpeters are on either side, with Louise Lewis Goodwin on timpani tucked in at the side. In the first and last movements this back row is responsible for the distinctively abrasive sound which marks out period instruments, and the basses, bowed  or pizzicato, combine well with that effect

Maxim Emelyanychev’s conducting style (seen in the photograph) is an important part of his relationship with the orchestra.  He uses neither baton or podium, but creates a space on the stage in which he can communicate with different musicians, for example to change the tempo for the dolce passages, giving the lovely woodwind harmonies room to breathe.  Mackerras, in his notes in the 2007 CD, pointed out that the clarinets give a distinctively warm tone to the symphony, and also that its melodies are like operatic ‘arias’.  True, I think, and wonder if the basses’ pizzicato sometimes acts as a continuo.

Trumpeters and timpanist depart before Symphony No 40 in G Minor, one of only two symphonies Mozart wrote in the minor key. In some recordings the first movement sounds fairly cheerful, but here there is a sense of unease from the beginning. The horn, no longer tied to the trumpet and drum fanfares, is heard as a lyrical wind instruments, a plangent and haunting presence from the second movement on – lovely playing from Kenneth Henderson and Daniel Lőffner.  The clarinets, playing with flute (surprisingly just one -Marta Gómez), bassoons and horns make more unusual harmonies. Although the second movement and the trio of the minuet are in the major key, Mozart resists the temptation to move into the major in the finale, and the conclusion remains resolutely downbeat.

Symphony No 41 in C Major is the Jupiter, the longest and most expansive of the group. Trumpets and drums have returned, and the clarinets have been replaced by oboes. Throughout the evening the string section of thirty players, with its large number of lower strings, has been the driving force of the music and its period sound.  Leader, Stephanie Gonley and the section principals, Marcus Barcham Stevens, second violin, Max Mandel viola, Philip Higham cello and Jamie Kenny bass, can take much credit for their precise playing, which varies from the vigorous baroque style in the grander first and last movements to the airy textures required in the slower passages. In this last symphony  the violins have an interesting innovation(as far as Mozart’s symphonies go) when they are asked to mute their strings for the second movement to provide a quiet delicate effect. The Jupiter’s finale takes a simple theme, one apparently from the counterpoint primer used by 18th century music students, and builds it up into a complex fugal conclusion. And then through the rigour of Mozart’s composition there emerges the stirring conclusion which we hear not just once but twice at the conclusion of this memorable evening. 

Photo credit: Christopher Bowen