Mozart on the Road: Part 1

Part 1

Wednesday 5 April

Queen Elizabeth Hall

SONGS OF TRAVEL

Welcome to our 2022 / 23 season, Songs of Travel. It is the final instalment of our ‘Six Chapters of Enlightenment’ series here at the Southbank Centre.

The idea of a journey excites us all. Whether it is a new adventure or one we have made dozens of times before. Travel and the idea of leaving home left a deep impression on the British and European mindset in the 17th and 18th centuries. And, of course, it is one of the great literary metaphors with the promise of discovering something about ourselves on the way to our destination.

The 18th Century was a whirlwind of correspondences. International navigation was leaping forward with Captain James Cook’s maritime expeditions whilst newspapers, novels and engravings were distributing ideas and images in a manner previously unparalleled. As a result, the

The music we’ve selected for the season reflects journeys that are physical and of the mind. It is the work of creative thinkers that were able to imagine unknown places through the descriptions of others, to put the fantastical to use to satirise the contemporary, to reimagine the past in new ways, to explore our individual freedom, our sense of collective belonging, and the need to travel to find their own place in the world, a journey many of us still make today.

Thank you for joining us today and supporting not just the OAE but live performance by the whole cultural community. Music by its very existence is about community and shared journeys, an adventure that looks beyond that which divides us to seek joy in common belief.

In our two Mozart on the Road concerts we perform works by composers whose reputations were in part forged by the travel and communications revolution of the Enlightenment. CPE Bach, JC Bach and Mozart, the sole focus of tonight’s programme, all found that leaving home was their route to personal discovery. If the means to travel had advanced, the mechanisms by which ideas were circulating leapt forward even more dramatically. Newspapers were becoming increasingly common – what we now know as The Times was first published in 1785 – and composers were increasingly able to take control of the commercial dissemination of their work (in no small way due to JC Bach himself, who had a won a landmark copyright legal case in 1777). Social change meant that a revolution was under way in the models by which professional musicians operated and audiences experienced music. This was exemplified by JC Bach’s London concert series and Mozart’s entrepreneurial activity in Vienna, which gave rise to the first two pieces on this evening’s programme.

Whether we are seasoned fans of Mozart or new to his music it seems he never loses his ability to astonish us. The remarkable fact about the three pieces performed tonight is not that they all date from the same year, 1784, but that they are only a snapshot of his achievements; his output that year also included five other very fine piano concertos, a number of highly regarded sonatas, and he continued work on what became known as the ‘Haydn Quartets’.

There will be a pre-concert talk with Kristian Bezuidenhout, Katherine Spencer and Roger Montgomery at 6.00pm in the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer.

Programme

Wednesday 5 April 2023

7.00pm at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791)

Quintet for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon

Largo – Allegro moderato

Larghetto

Allegretto

Piano Concerto No. 17

Allegro

Andante

Allegretto – Presto

Interval

Symphony No. 36 ‘Linz’

Adagio – Allegro spiritoso

Andante

Menuetto – Trio

Presto

ORCHESTRA OF THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Kristian Bezuidenhout fortepiano

Matthew Truscott leader

Clara Espinosa Encinas oboe

Katherine Spencer clarinet

Roger Montgomery horn

Jane Gower bassoon

This concert is supported by Philip & Rosalyn Wilkinson and Mark & Rosamund Williams

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Violins I

Matthew Truscott

Daniel Edgar

Rodolfo Richter

Kinga Ujszaszi

Julia Kuhn

Claire Holden

Violins II

Margaret Faultless

Nia Lewis

Alice Evans

Claudia Delago-Norz

Debbie Diamond

Henry Tong

Violas

Alexandru-Mihai Bota

Martin Kelly

Kate Heller

Marina Ascherson

Cellos

Kate Gould

Helen Verney

Carina Drury

Basses

Margaret Urquhart

Kate Brooke

Flute

Lisa Beznosiuk

Oboes

Clara Espinosa Encinas

Bethan White

Clarinet

Katherine Spencer

Bassoons

Jane Gower

Sally Jackson

Horns

Roger Montgomery

Martin Lawrence

Trumpets

David Blackadder

Matthew Wells

Timpani

Adrian Bending

Mozart on the Road

Nicholas Kenyon

that survives as Wolfgang’s Symphony No 1. But this is indeed an authentic Mozart site: in the 1991 Mozart celebrations, the group of houses was renamed Mozart Terrace, unveiled by Roger Norrington with a wind serenade in the street.

If you have some time to spare when travelling from Victoria Coach Station (or a little longer when at the train terminus), pop round the corner into Ebury Street and walk south. There at 180 Ebury Street at the end of a Georgian terrace, is a house which bears a brown plaque. The young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, it claims, ‘composed his first symphony here in 1764’. Well, that may or may not have been the case, as his sister Nannerl’s recollections of that his composing that work ‘with all the instruments of the orchestra especially trumpets and kettledrums’ do not quite match the piece

The house is one in which the eight-yearold Mozart, his sister Nannerl and father Leopold stayed on their first visit to London, and in the context of ‘Mozart on the Road’ it perhaps has special significance in representing the huge, time-consuming importance of the Mozarts’ travels in the search for fame and fortune. Leopold was unremitting in his efforts to earn attention and income from his two talented children, but in London he was overcome by what he called ‘a sort of national disease here which is called a “cold”’, hence the move from the centre of the city out to this address in Chelsea, where the air was better and there were extensive gardens.

Given the demands of travel by horsedrawn coach at the time, long before Victoria Station existed, it is extraordinary to read of the journeys which the family had started the previous year including to Munich, Swetzingen, Frankfurt, Aixla-Chapelle, Brussels and Paris, in the presence of royalty and the aristocracy, attracting amazed praise and disbelief: ‘Tell me, does this not exceed all imagination?’ wrote one astonished listener. And of course, a trip to London

180 Ebury Street, Belgravia, City of Westminster, London.

involved a channel crossing, all the more surprising for those like the young children from inland Austria who had never before seen the sea or felt its effects.

the young Mozart. Nannerl recalled that Johann Christian took the young Wolfgang between his knees at the keyboard, ‘the former played a few bars, and then the other continued, and in this way they played a whole sonata and anyone not watching would have thought it was played by one person alone’.

There is a big question as to how far Leopold’s proud parading of his children was exploitative: it certainly made extreme demands on the family, especially on Nannerl who, though highly skilled, always seems to have played a supporting role to her brilliant brother. But one mitigating factor in the treatment of Wolfgang was surely the fact that being on the road exposed him to a wide range of music – for him, travel was an immersive school in the styles of the time from which, with his sponge-like genius in absorbing and transforming influences, he learned a huge amount.

For example, when in London the Mozarts almost certainly heard the opera Artaxerxes by Thomas Arne, perhaps some Handel oratorios, and in particular the opera Adriano in Siria by Johann Christian Bach which had its premiere while they were in town. Johann Christian, the son of JS Bach, whom we will encounter in Mozart on the Road: Part 2, befriended

Thus Mozart learned on his travels, and thus he prospered. At home in Salzburg his main influences would have been the music of his father, Joseph Haydn’s brother Michael, and composers like Wagenseil, whose music Wolfgang had played since the age of five. Now his world-view was much wider, and it eventually led to a profound disenchantment with Salzburg and its music-making. He had received opera commissions, toured Italy, and worked in Mannheim where the superb instrumentalists of the orchestra inspired him. A much less happy tour occurred in 1777, when Leopold petitioned the Archbishop of Salzburg for permission for the family to travel to Paris. It was grudgingly given, and his wife Anna Maria went with Wolfgang, and it was on this trip that she died, causing huge problems and recriminations for the composer.

It was clear that Salzburg was a restrictive, restraining force on Wolfgang’s development, and his unhappiness boiled over in 1781 when he asked to be released from service in Salzburg (‘to waste one’s life in inactivity in such a beggarly place is really very sad’) and determined to set up in Vienna, earning in his ‘exit interview’ the immortal ‘kick on the arse’ from the Archbishop’s chief steward to send him on his way.

This was a decisive moment for Mozart, and we might add for the world of music as a whole, because he was now casting himself into the uncertain landscape of a freelance life without court appointments, creating his own opportunities and earning his own income. He did it, for a time very

Painting of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by Barbara Krafft, 1819

successfully, by ceasing to go on the road, and by settling to creating relationships with the influential families of the city. He acquired teaching jobs, mounted concerts to display his skills, made use of the carnival period, and married Constanze Weber the following year, creating another storm of domestic drama with his father’s disapproval.

The arrangements for giving concerts were dependent on the enthusiasm of the nobility, and entrepreneurs who mounted events: one observer noted ‘music is the only thing about which the nobility shows taste. Many houses have their own band of musicians, and all the public concerts bear witness that this aspect of art is in high respect here’. Mozart described to his father arrangements for a twelveconcert series in the Augarten in 1782, from which he would potentially earn significant income. He gradually became famous at the centre of Viennese musical life, the Emperor Joseph II attended some

of his concerts, and all was set fair for a dazzling career. But it was not to last.

In retrospect, the year 1784, when Mozart turned 28, was one of the most successful years of his life: he was settled in Vienna at the peak of his public success, and produced a string of masterpieces three of which we hear in this concert. I think an important sign of the composer feeling both comfortable in Vienna and satisfied with his success, is that in February of that year he begins to keep a meticulous Thematic Catalogue of his work. This remarkable document is now in the British Library, as it was owned from the 1930s by Stefan Zweig, whose heirs first loaned and then bequeathed it to the Library. It is an intensely touching document, especially for the many blank staves which are unfilled on his death, and the incomplete title ‘February 1784 to [blank] 1 [blank]’, as if he assumed he would live into the next century.

WA Mozart’s thematic catalogue of his own works. Held by: British Library. Shelfmark: Zweig MS 63

The centrality of Mozart’s own work as a performer can observed from the fact that the first entries in the catalogue are piano concertos. Then the fourth entry from 30 March is the Quintet for Piano and Wind K452 with which this concert begins. This intimate masterpiece was performed on 1 April (which did not leave much time for preparation). However, Mozart was ecstatic about the work’s reception, writing to his father, who still needed persuading that his son had done the right thing by going to Vienna, ‘I consider it to be the best work I have ever composed’.

Mozart’s skill at balancing the solo instruments with the piano, teasing out the special character of each wind instrument, is evident throughout; the slow introduction gives a weightiness to the work, though both first and last movement are transparently scored (especially noticeable with the contrasted textures of period instruments) while the central Larghetto allows each instrument to make the simple theme its own. The joyous contrasts reach their culmination in the cadenza to the last movement, in which all the instruments participate in imitation.

The same sense of intimate conversation between pianist and ensemble pervades the ensemble of the Piano Concerto in G, which was performed by Mozart’s pupil Babette von Ployer at a concert in a summer palace in the Viennese suburb of Döbling in June 1784. It’s a serene and sunny work, with few dark clouds: the succession of varied themes in the first movement are combined

and reordered in magical sequences. The dance-like theme of the last movement has become famous because Mozart claimed that his pet starling could sing it, albeit with a wrong note. He noted this down in his cash book – another innovation for the organised composer in 1784, but one which did not last long.

The magnificent ‘Linz’ Symphony in C is so named because Mozart had to write it as he put it ‘at breakneck speed’ while he was visiting the city at the end of 1783 and his hosts wanted a concert. So his travels dominate once again at the end of this event: it seems that it was easier for Mozart to write a new symphony than to remember an old one. (When he looked back at the ‘Haffner’ symphony a year after he had written it, he claimed to his father it astonished him because he had forgotten every note.) Like the Quintet, the Symphony gains weight from a slow introduction, and the intricate writing for the wind is again prominent. But here there is pain as well as pleasure, in the bare passages of the first movement between the fanfares, in the strange scale passages of the central siciliano which reach up the interval of a ninth before falling back, and especially in the Presto finale. Here the propulsive, simple melodies are interwoven with heart-rending sequences, not paralleled anywhere else in Mozart’s symphonic output: the strings dialogue in aching off-beat phrases under wind chords, before subsiding chromatically to nothing. Where on earth did this come from, and what did it mean? As so often with Mozart, we can only wonder and marvel.

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Biography

He has performed with celebrated artists including John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe, Frans Brüggen, Trevor Pinnock, Giovanni Antonini, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Isabelle Faust, Alina Ibragimova, Carolyn Sampson, Anne Sofie von Otter, Mark Padmore & Matthias Goerne.

Kristian Bezuidenhout

Kristian Bezuidenhout is one of today’s most notable and exciting keyboard artists, equally at home on the fortepiano, harpsichord, and modern piano.

Kristian is an Artistic Director of the Freiburger Barockorchester and Principal Guest Director with the English Concert. He is a regular guest with leading ensembles including Les Arts Florissants, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester; and has guest-directed (from the keyboard) the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Tafelmusik, Collegium Vocale, Juilliard 415, Kammerakademie Potsdam and Dunedin Consort (St Matthew Passion).

The 2022 / 23 season sees Kristian perform with the Auckland Philharmonic, Guerzenich Orchester, and play-direct projects with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Kammerochester Basel, Philharmonia Baroque and Concerto Copenhagen. He will join Mark Padmore and Sol Gabetta for recitals in Europe and will undertake a North American tour with Anne Sofie von Otter.

Kristian’s rich and award-winning discography on Harmonia Mundi includes the complete solo keyboard music of Mozart. Recent releases include Winterreisse with Mark Padmore, Bach sonatas for violin and harpsichord with Isabelle Faust, Haydn piano sonatas and the complete Beethoven Concerti with Freiburger Barokorchester.

25 Years of the OAE Benevolent Fund

The 2022 / 23 season marks 25 years since the foundation of the OAE Benevolent Fund, a unique charity that provides support for players of the OAE. The OAE’s musicians are self employed, and if they have to withdraw from an engagement, for example due to illness or injury, they do not receive compensation.

That is when the OAE Benevolent Fund steps in.

How did the Benevolent Fund come about?

The Benevolent Fund, an initiative of the players themselves, was started 25 years ago as a way to support each other through difficult circumstances. Being a musician has always been a risky business, and the Benevolent Fund ensured that this risk was shared between the players of the OAE.

We need your support

Historically, the Benevolent Fund was subsidised by the players themselves, who would contribute to the Fund through donations, stipends, and by regularly waiving their fees at nominated concerts. Today, our musicians are facing challenges such as cancelled engagements, loss of work abroad, and funding cuts. It is no longer sustainable for the players to support this fund directly.

Therefore, we need your help in order to continue to support the valuable work of these world-class musicians. Every gift made to the Benevolent Fund goes directly to covering lost fees for players in addition to providing a safety net for those who are unable to perform due to injury or illness.

To read more and support the OAE Benevolent Fund, scan the QR code or visit oae.co.uk/support-us/benevolent-fund/

In 1986, a group of inquisitive London musicians took a long hard look at that curious institution we call the Orchestra, and decided to start again from scratch. They began by throwing out the rulebook. Put a single conductor in charge? No way. Specialise in repertoire of a particular era? Too restricting. Perfect a work and then move on? Too lazy. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was born.

And as this distinctive ensemble playing on period-specific instruments began to get a foothold, it made a promise to itself. It vowed to keep questioning, adapting and inventing as long as it lived. Residencies at the Southbank Centre and the Glyndebourne Festival didn’t numb its experimentalist bent. A major record deal didn’t iron out its quirks. Instead, the OAE examined musical notes with ever more freedom and resolve.

That creative thirst remains unquenched. The Night Shift series of informal performances are redefining concert formats. Its former home at London’s Kings Place has fostered further diversity of planning and music-making. The ensemble has formed the bedrock for some of Glyndebourne’s most groundbreaking recent productions.

In keeping with its values of always questioning, challenging and trailblazing, in September 2020, the OAE became the resident orchestra of Acland Burghley School, Camden. The residency – a first for a British orchestra – allows the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to live, work and play amongst the students of the school.

Now more than thirty years old, the OAE is part of our musical furniture. It has even graced the outstanding conducting talents of John Butt, Elder, Adam Fischer, Iván Fischer, Jurowski, Rattle and Schiff with a joint title of Principal Artist. But don’t ever think the ensemble has lost sight of its founding vow. Not all orchestras are the same. And there’s nothing quite like this one.

Andrew Mellor

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OAE Education 2022 / 23

A programme to involve, empower and inspire

Early Years and Key Stage 1 Programmes

The Spring Term is a peak time for our work in schools for Early Years (up to 5 years old) and Key Stage 1 (KS1, pupils from 5 to 7 years old) with workshops and concerts from south to north.

The King of the Sea project introduces children at schools in our five partner boroughs in London – Camden, Brent, Merton, Wandsworth and Ealing – to the music of Handel and Purcell through an environment-themed story. On board the Sailboat Malarkey, our young adventurers meet Poseidon, the King of the Sea, who is jealously guarding his treasure chest. This turns out to be the junk people on land have thrown away, but we discover how it can be given a second life being recycled as instruments to make music.

Over 650 KS1 pupils in our partner London boroughs took part in The Magic of Mozart project. This delivers

a workshop with OAE players in each participating school followed by attending a concert. Pupils learn about the different instruments and sounds of the orchestra and explore music including Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 and a participatory version of his ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ variations (arranged by James Redwood).

In addition, the team has travelled for residencies in York and County Durham to work in schools and give performances of The King of the Sea and Papageno and the Bird That Would Be Free. Our educational residencies also create opportunities for engaging with communities more widely. As part of our ongoing work in North Norfolk we have given a chamber concert in North Walsham, whilst our work in County Durham and York will see events as part of the Durham Vocal Festival, concerts at the University of York and a family concert at the National Centre for Early Music.

OAE Educational Activity in 2023

Principal Residency at Acland Burghley School

Acland Burghley School is a home for our players, staff and governance. It is also a crucial hub for our educational programme. Here we engage students in a range of different programmes that support curricular and extra-curricular activity from dance projects to our own unique jamming sessions, Musical Connections, and our Dreamchasing Young Producers programme. We bring the school community into our musical world through workshops, access to rehearsals and concerts and carefully curated Encounter Sessions where students have their own unique introduction to the OAE.

National Residencies

For many years, the OAE has been committed to a national programme of engagement in underserved communities. In 2023, that work continues in key residencies in North Walsham, Ipswich, York, Durham and King’s Lynn with community concerts, workshops, programmes for early years (TOTS), and specially curated programmes for schools (The Magic Flute and The Life of the Sea) based on the core repertoire of the OAE.

In London Schools

The OAE has long-established relationships with many schools across London. In harmony with the national plan, the OAE will offer The Magic of Mozart and The Life of the Sea to young people from Camden, Brent, Merton, Wandsworth and Ealing.

Special Needs

A key priority for the OAE Education team is to respond meaningfully to the additional educational needs of young people. We are proud to be working with students at Swiss Cottage Special School, Camden, and Thomas Worsley Special School, Ipswich, as part of the Musical Connections project that is also a crucial component of our residency at Acland Burghley School.

Alongside a choir of 1,500 in a musical spectacular (Something Special) at the Royal Albert Hall, we will be sharing music created by young people from Great Ormond Street and University College Hospital Schools as well as students from Swiss Cottage Special School.

For Families

Throughout the year, we present specially curated events for families. These include OAE TOTS concerts at the Southbank Centre (Pack Your Bags), OAE TOTS FUNharmonics workshops with the LPO and The Magic Flute at the York Rise Street Party in our home borough of Camden.

Developing Young Talent

The OAE is committed to developing the next generation of talent in the following programmes:

OAE Experience scheme to help aspiring young professional musicians develop in historically informed performance practice.

OAE Rising Stars is a biennial competitive programme for debutant singers, offering high-profile opportunities with the OAE on the international stage.

Suffolk Young Strings Project is a project to encourage players to create new compositions inspired by baroque music.

Our participants come from a wide range of backgrounds and we pride ourselves in working flexibly, adapting to the needs of local people and the places where they live. The extensive partnerships we have built up over many years ensure maximum and lasting impact.

We take inspiration from the OAE’s repertoire, instruments and players. This makes for a vibrant, challenging and engaging programme where everyone is involved; players, animateurs, composers, participants, teachers, partners and supporters all have a valued voice.

We do hope you can join us for some of these events! Please contact us if you would like further details on how to attend or support these projects.

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Our work at Acland Burghley School

In September 2020, we took up permanent residence at Acland Burghley School in Camden, North London. The residency –a first for a British orchestra – allows us to live, work and play amongst the students of the school.

Three offices have been adapted for our administration team. We use the Grade II-listed school assembly hall as a rehearsal space, with plans to refurbish it under the school’s ‘A Theatre for All’ project. The school isn’t just our landlord or physical home. Instead, it allows us to build on twenty years of work in the borough through OAE’s long-standing partnership with Camden Music. Having already worked in eighteen of the local primary schools that feed into ABS, the plans moving forward are to support music and arts across the school into the wider community. Our move underpins our core enlightenment mission of universal engagement, of access without frontiers.

What do backflips, smoke machines and baroque drums all have in common?

Answer: our first video collaboration with Acland Burghley students. We teamed up with year 10 students who performed a dance that they choreographed for their GCSE exam, accompanied by us performing Rameau’s ‘Danse des

Sauvages’ from Les Indes Galantes. After taking inspiration from baroque dances on YouTube and being drawn to the distinctive rhythmic pulse in the Rameau, the pupils sparked enthusiastic discussion with our players to allow the choreography and music to evolve hand in hand. They also had their say in the direction and recording of the music video, which you can watch on our YouTube channel.

We brought The Moon Hares, an opera for young families which we commissioned in 2019, into the school hall and performed it alongside pupils from ABS as well as Gospel Oak and Kentish Town primary schools. The electrifying performance included music both old and new, with sections from Purcell’s 17th century opera Dioclesian mixed with original, modern music by James Redwood.

There’s also been a bustle of activity away from the camera in our ongoing private classroom education. We’ve delivered numerous interactive workshops for all students in Years 7, 8 and 9, including an exploration of the orchestra’s instruments, illustrated sessions on blues and jazz compositional techniques as part of curriculum studies and a study a day for all GCSE music students on Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.4.

Dreamchasing Young Producers

The value of our residency in Acland Burghley School can be realised in many ways beyond the immediate practice of orchestral musicianship.

One of the key objectives in our mission is to lift aspirations and broaden horizons for life beyond school. We want to help students leave school with richer CVs and stronger professional prospects.

One great way to do that is to mentor the next generation in all those things we have learned as an organisation. At the start of the 2021 / 2022 school year, we launched our Young Producers’ programme in which we offer mentoring, training and work-placement apprenticeship so that the young people in our new community acquire essential skills in management and production, from budgets, compliance and risk assessment to camera operation and stage design.

We are proud of our first cohort, who have already learned so much and become a key part of our working routine. They will one day graduate as accredited producers

and become the mentors, at our side, for future recruits.

More than just an extra-curricular enterprise, this is a programme that we expect to connect with sixth-form education in the new government T Level examination programme.

Young Producers

Armin Eorsi

Harvey O’Brien

Iremide Onibonoje

Jessica Sexton-Smith

Matas Juskevicius

Michael Hau

Nathan Kilby

Raphael Thornton

Riley Silver

Sidney Crossing

Sophia Vainshtok

Tom Cohen

Daniel Miliband

Jaeden Ferritto

Sacha Cross

Daniel Wilton-Ely

Ines Whitaker

Alex Parry

Welcome to the Southbank Centre

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SONGS OF TRAVEL at the Southbank Centre

18 May

Mozart on the Road: Part 2 with Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello)

7 & 8 June

Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant with John Wilson (conductor)

THE NIGHT SHIFT

Chamber music down a local pub

25 April, Brixton

The Blues Kitchen

BACH, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING at Kings Place

Mission: to explore our place in the cosmos guided by the intergalactic genius of JS Bach. Each monthly event features one of Bach’s cantatas, and other choral and instrumental works, alongside a talk by an eminent astronomer.

New season coming in Autumn 2023.

COMING UP... Part 2

All the composers featured in tonight’s programme left home to find their own voices. Each of the four pieces tell a story of how CPE Bach, JC Bach and Mozart became agents of change in their new havens.

Bach’s two most famous sons were key players in the transition from the baroque style of their father to the new classical style that found its brightest invention in Mozart, Haydn and later Beethoven. JC Bach (‘the London Bach’) ran popular subscription concerts in London from the mid-1760s (and opened the Hanover Square Rooms in 1775) which often featured his numerous, charming sinfonia concertantes. CPE Bach, although he held more conventional court positions in Berlin and Hamburg, was an innovator in the emerging symphony form and solo concertos.

Mozart’s escape to Vienna fits the popular narrative of the young composer as a picaresque hero. It also speaks of a visionary with a serious purpose to shake up the musical establishment. He took his Symphony No 34 with him from Salzburg to Vienna, where it was one of his first big public hits.

7.00pm

Thursday 18 May

Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall