Mozart - Symphony No. 40 (Karajan, BPO)

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550

00:00 - 1. Molto Allegro
07:22 - 2. Andante
15:05 - 3. Menuetto - Allegretto
19:43 - 4. Allegro assai

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) (conductor)

Taken from CD2 of "Mozart, W.A.: Symphonies Nos. 35-41"
Recorded 1976-1977 in the Philharmonie Berlin
All copyrights belong to © Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin.
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As Neal Zaslaw has pointed out, writers on Mozart have often suggested – or even asserted – that Mozart never heard his 40th Symphony performed. Some commentators go further, suggesting that Mozart wrote the symphony (and its companions, Nos. 39 and 41) without even intending it to be performed, but rather for posterity, as (to use Alfred Einstein's words) an "appeal to eternity".

Modern scholarship suggests that these conjectures are not correct. For instance, in a recently discovered 10 July 1802 letter by the musician Johann Wenzel (1762–1831) to the publisher Ambrosius Kühnel in Leipzig, Wenzel refers to a performance of the symphony at the home of Baron Gottfried van Swieten with Mozart present, but the execution was so poor that the composer had to leave the room.

The first movement begins darkly, not with its first theme but with the accompaniment, played by the lower strings with divided violas. The technique of beginning a work with an accompaniment figure was later used by Mozart in his last piano concerto (KV. 595) and later became a favorite of the Romantics (examples include the openings of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and Sergei Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto).

The second movement is a lyrical work in 6/8 time. It is in the subdominant key of the relative major of G minor (B♭ major): E♭ major.

The minuet begins with an angry, cross-accented hemiola rhythm and a pair of three-bar phrases. The severe character of the minuet stands in contrast to the form's traditional use as dance music, a genre frequently used by Mozart. The contrasting gentle trio section, in G major, alternates the playing of the string section with that of the winds.

The fourth movement opens with a series of rapidly ascending notes outlining the tonic triad illustrating what is commonly referred to as the "Mannheim rocket". A remarkable modulating passage in which every tone in the chromatic scale but one is played, strongly destabilizing the key, occurs at the beginning of the development section; the single note left out is G (the tonic).

This work has elicited varying interpretations from critics. Robert Schumann regarded it as possessing "Grecian lightness and grace". Donald Tovey saw in it the character of opera buffa. It is perhaps a more common perception today that the symphony is tragic in tone and intensely emotional; for example, in The Classical Style, Charles Rosen calls the symphony "a work of passion, violence, and grief".

Ludwig van Beethoven knew the symphony well, copying out 29 bars from the score in one of his sketchbooks. As Gustav Nottebohm observed in 1887, the copied bars appear amid the sketches for Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, whose third movement begins with a pitch sequence similar to that of Mozart's finale.

Franz Schubert likewise copied down the music of Mozart's minuet, and the minuet of his Fifth Symphony strongly evokes Mozart's. Neal Zaslaw has suggested that a passage late in Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Seasons (1801), a meditation on death, quotes the second movement of the 40th Symphony and was included by Haydn as a memorial to his long-dead friend.

Karajan's recording of Mozart's 40th with the Berlin Philharmonic is a true sleeper. As most conductors would often go preferably slower on the first movement rather than what's being presented here, I'd say that this tempo perfectly evokes that sense of grief and passion of which Mozart probably intended to express in this piece. The orchestra also produces the sound needed to invoke these passionate feelings, while maintaining that classical feel to the work. Overall, it truly is a recording worth listening to.