TUESDAY, September 8, 2020 – 2:37 AM
1780: Symphony No. 34 in C major (SALTERELLO), age 24
If you don’t know this symphony, start out with the 3rd movement. It’s the famous one, and it’s a home run!
- 0:01 – I. Allegro vivace, C major: There are only a few more instruments in this than in Symphony No. 33, but with two trumpets and timpani it just sounds bigger.
- 8:02 – II. Andante di molto (più tosto Allegretto), F major: The violas are divided, and a single bassoon doubles the lower strings.
- 16:30 – III. Finale: Allegro vivace, C major: The finale is a lively tarantella or saltarello in very fast 6/8, and this gives it a typical Italian sound. So I used “saltarello” as a nickname. This is the part everyone knows. It’s really famous.
Instrumentation:
2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.
C major…
Mozart’s seemed to reserve this key for especially joyous works, and it’s the first of his late symphonies (written as an adult) to be in C major.
Also true of the 36th (Linz) and 41st (Jupiter) symphonies.
Klemperer has the slowest 2nd movement…
This recording is very special because Klemperer plays the 2nd movement very slowly. Apparently Mozart changed his mind and altered the speed marking to a faster speed.
Hard times in Salzburg…
Mozart’s young adulthood in Salzburg was a frustrating time for the him, and he struggled for years to find a way out of his provincial hometown. Prospects brightened in 1780 soon culminating in an independent career in Vienna.
Last before leaving Salzburg…
This is the last symphony Mozart wrote before leaving Salzburg. He completed it on August 29, 1780.
No minuet…
The manuscript includes the beginning of a minuet on the back of the first movement’s last page. Mozart crossed 14 measures of music out and appears to have ripped out two pages. Does this mean that he wrote a complete minuet and it has been lost? Or did he decide to go with only three movements? We simply don’t know.
Divided violas…
Mozart uses violas divided into two parts in the slow movement, and to me this indicates how important the viola was to Mozart, true also of Beethoven.
As I was not familiar with this Symphony I took your advice and listened to the third movement first. I found it to be very cheerful and full of energy, quite a change from the tempo of the second movement.