Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 3 / Beethoven: Violin Concerto In D Major

Description

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) Violin Concerto No.3 in G Major, K. 216 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) Violin Concerto in D Major Op. 61 (Cadenzas by Kreisler) Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus and the subsequent film based on the play presented an apparent paradox. For dramatic rather than historical purposes Mozart was shown as a thoroughly unworthy vehicle for divine inspiration, as opposed to the jealous old court composer Antonio Salieri, worthy but uninspired. The truth of the matter must be rather different. Mozart had been brought up to mix with a higher level of society and to avoid too much contact with humble musicians, in this following the example of his father. The five violin concertos that Mozart wrote in Salzburg in 1775 might seem to offer a similar paradox, at least when they were performed by the violinist Antonio Brunetti, a man whom Mozart was later to describe as a disgrace to his profession, coarse and dirty. Brunetti, a Neapolitan by birth, had been appointed Hofmusikdirektor and Hofkonzertmeister in Salzburg in 1776 and in the following year he succeeded Mozart as Konzertmeister, when the latter left the services of the Archbishop of Salzburg to seek his fortune in Mannheim and Paris. In 1778 Brunetti had to marry Maria Judith Lipps, the sister-in-law of Michael Haydn, who had already born him a child. Mozart himself was fastidious about the company he kept and he clearly regarded Brunetti as uncouth. Nevertheless the exigencies of his profession found Brunetti providing tolerable performances of the concertos. The first soloist, however, seems to have been Franz Xaver Kolb, a Salzburg musician and a competent enough violinist. We hear in passing of these performances by Kolb and by Brunetti in letters from Leopold Mozart to his son written during the latter's absence in 1777 and 1778, letters that paint a clear enough picture of the kind of music-making there was to be had in Salzburg, and from Mozart's own letters, the vastly superior standards of Mannheim, and given the exaggerations of French taste, of Paris. By the age of nineteen Mozart encouraged by his father Leopold had become increasingly anxious that a place should be found for him in a more distinguished position than Salzburg could ever offer. His dissatisfaction was to lead to his attempt to find employment in Mannheim or in Paris, and finally, in 1781, to a breach with his patron the Archbishop and to a final decade of precarious independence in Vienna. Limited as it might have been, Salzburg, all the same, offered some opportunities. In 1775 the Archbishop commissioned a setting of a Metastasio libretto, Il re pastore, for the official visit to the town of the Archduke Maximilian Franz in April. The violin concertos were written later in the year and as we have seen provided at least a reminder of Mozart's achievement during his long absence. The Concerto in G Major, K. 216, shares the greater popularity of the last three of the series. The opening A