VCHpresents Chamber: In the Company of Mozart

IN THE COMPANY OF MOZART 23 Oct (7PM) & 24 OCT (4PM), 2021 VICTORIA CONCERT HALL

PROGRAMME HAYDN London Trio No. 1 in C, for 2 flutes and bassoon

8 mins

Evgueni Brokmiller, flute Miao Shan Shan, flute Zhao Ying Xue, bassoon

MOZART Flute Quartet No. 1 in D major, K. 285

14 mins

Roberto Alvarez, flute Chikako Sasaki, violin Dandan Wang, viola Chan Wei Shing, cello

BEETHOVEN Sextet in E-flat major, Op. 81b Jamie Hersch, horn Hoang Van Hoc, horn Chan Yoong-Han, violin Cindy Lee, violin Janice Tsai, viola Song Woon Teng, cello Wang Xu, double bass

17 mins

MOZART Menuetto and Rondo from Divertimento No. 17, K. 334

15 mins

Jamie Hersch, horn Hoang Van Hoc, horn Chan Yoong-Han, violin Cindy Lee, violin Janice Tsai, viola Song Woon Teng, cello Wang Xu, double bass

CONCERT DURATION: approximately 1 hour 15 mins (with no intermission)

PROGRAMME NOTES JOSEPH HAYDN (1732 - 1809) London Trio No. 1 in C, for 2 flutes and bassoon I. Allegro moderato II. Andante III. Finale: Vivace ‘Papa Haydn’ is also known as the ‘Father of the String Quartet’, making it easy to forget that a large part of his output was chamber music for forces other than string quartet, and often for unusual scorings – some 120 trios for baryton (the hobby instrument of his employer Prince Nikolaus Esterházy), viola, and violoncello, for a start.

Haydn visited England twice, between 1791-1792 and 17941795. Before these trips, he had never been more than a hundred miles from his birthplace and the only ‘public’ he had known was the assorted royal and aristocratic visitors who watched performances in his employers’ residences. In England he received a welcome of a scale that we would now associate with Hollywood celebrities and rock stars. He was fêted by press, aristocracy, and electrified full-house audiences. On the second visit, lasting 20 months, King George III invited Haydn to settle in England.

It was during this second visit that he produced the London Trios as a gift to the Earl of Abingdon and Sir Walter Aston.

The work was originally composed for two flutes and violoncello, a combination popular in England at the time as the flute was fashionable. This evening the violoncello line is taken by the bassoon.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 - 1791) Flute Quartet No.1 in D major, K. 285 I. Allegro II. Adagio III. Rondo What do gangrene, Mozart, and the Straits of Malacca have in common?

In 1777, on a visit with his mother to Mannheim, the young Mozart met the German amateur flautist Ferdinand Dejean, who had spent ten years in Asia as a surgeon with the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) hacking gangrenous limbs off sailors in an age before anaesthetics, and had now returned a man of fortune, dedicating himself to the study of medicine as a man of arts, letters, and science, and a patron of the arts. Did Dejean play his flute between gory surgeries while on a ship passing Singapore as he travelled between Malacca and Batavia (now Jakarta)? We shall never know.

The Flute Quartet No.1 was written between December 1777 and February 1778 in a batch of three flute concerti and three flute quartets for Dejean, who paid Mozart 96 florins (equivalent to about SGD 2,400) for the lot. It is in three movements, with the opening Allegro is in sonata form, lilting and full of melodic invention.

The wistful Adagio is in B minor, an unusual key for Mozart but well suited to the flute (Bach’s flute solos in his cantatas are mostly in this key) accompanied by pizzicato strings.

Where we would expect a final cadence, Mozart surprises us by lopping it off and going directly to the final energetic Rondo.

Was this a musical reference to Dejean’s work of amputation?

Given Mozart’s sense of humour, we may well wonder!

latter joined the orchestra as a viola player, and we may well imagine the work being written for this circle of friendly colleagues to play.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770 - 1827) Sextet in E-flat major, Op. 81b I. Allegro con brio II. Adagio III. Rondo. Allegro

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 - 1791) Menuetto and Rondo from Divertimento No. 17, K. 334

How many players does it take to play Beethoven’s Sextet, Op. 81b?

The answer depends on whom you ask. Common sense tells us six, but the 1810 first edition of the work published in Bonn by Beethoven’s friend and publisher Nikolaus Simrock has the lowest string part described as ‘Violoncello e Basso’ and has sections specified ‘Vllo.’ (for violoncello alone) and ‘Bassi’ (meaning violoncello and contrabass). However, in another copy Beethoven himself corrected, there is no mention of contrabass. What did Beethoven really want? Simrock’s edition shows some small changes in pitch and part allocation that nobody else but Beethoven himself could have introduced, so Beethoven must have authorised the contrabass – giving us a sextet for seven players.

This sextet is light, smooth and satisfying, with few signs of the darker intense Beethoven to come.

While not escaping the hunting horn clichés so beloved of the period, the work has plenty of opportunities for the horn players to show off their virtuosity in its three movements. Simrock himself played second horn in the electoral orchestra at Bonn and was Beethoven’s friend and colleague from 1789 when the

Mozart’s Divertimento No. 17 in D major, K. 334, was probably written between 1779 and 1780, for his close friend, Georg Sigismund Robinig, on the occasion of his graduation from the law school at the University of Salzburg. Scored for two violins, viola, bass, and two horns, the horns add a noble touch and gravitas that complement the strings, which are lacking a cello.

Tonight’s selection features two of the Divertimento’s six movements. The Menuetto is broad and full of momentum, with the horns punctuating the journey almost like the tooting of a train’s whistle. The movement has two contrasting trios, both mysterious and pregnant in a minor key. The horns gently try to nudge the ensemble back to D major, each time unsuccessfully. The final Rondo is an Allegro without the stark contrasts of the previous movement, giving us the impression of an expansive canvas painted with broad strokes. On closer examination, we find that Mozart has filled it with detail – repeats are written out and varied, and the 6/8 metre moves the music along like a gentle railway ride through fields, with sunshine provided by the cheerful violin solo passages.

Notes by Edward C. Yong

SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Founded in 1979, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is Singapore’s flagship orchestra, touching lives through classical music and providing the heartbeat of the cultural scene in the cosmopolitan city-state. Our Chief Conductor is Hans Graf. While the SSO performs frequently at the Esplanade Concert Hall, for a more intimate experience, we return to the place of our beginnings, the Victoria Concert Hall (VCH) – the home of the SSO. The VCH is host to our popular Children’s, Family and biannual free Lunchtime Concerts as well as our VCHpresents chamber series.

HANS GRAF Chief Conductor

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