Last September at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, German virtuoso Anne-Sophie Mutter performed a programme of five Mozart violin sonatas. It was an interesting artistic statement.
Here was a virtuoso ignoring the usual recital programme of big pieces. Instead she gave an intensely cerebral performance of works that reveal Mozart deferring to Bach and offering a prelude of sorts to Beethoven. For all the flourish, melody and beauty, there is a subtle formal intelligence guiding the ethereal grace that is Mozart.
He is a composer who repeatedly eludes easy definition. He wrote 22 operas, seven of which - including his "big four", Le Nozze Di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, 1786), Don Giovanni (1787), Così Fan Tutte (1790) and Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute, 1791) - are among the finest ever written.
From Handel onwards, almost every major operatic composer has tended to specialise in writing operas, Mozart instead brought a symphonic approach to the music and a playwright's psychological insight to characterisation.
His 41 symphonies represent only a tiny element of his orchestral output, yet the final three evoke contrasting aspects of Mozart's personality and offer glimpses, particularly in the dramatically imperial opening movement of Symphony 41, the Jupiter, of the Beethoven to come.
One of the most satisfying musical experiences is an investigation of Mozart's 23 string quartets. It was Mozart's music which was the basis for the 20th-century upsurge in chamber music performance. Yet ironically, for all the splendours and delights, if one were confined to only one work by a composer who triumphed in so many forms and with several solo instruments, it would be his Grosse Messe.
In his early years in Salzburg, Mozart wrote 18 masses. His Mass in C was his first non-commissioned Mass and he planned it on a vast scale. It possesses a solemn sense of faith and is, above all, a soaring soprano works. He began it in 1781, shortly after moving to Vienna, and no doubt looked to Bach's B Minor Mass as a model, but the work was never finished. Nevertheless it is a splendid achievement, balancing the austere grandeur of the Baroque counterpoint he absorbed from Bach and Handel with his graceful, operatic sweetness.
Soprano Barbara Bonny, in Gramophone magazine, says Mozart demands "the purest and most honest form of singing . . .", he was "completely in love with pure high voices". Bonny also comments on the fact that Mozart is played to babies "to enhance their IQs, it is written with such perfection".
But there are many Mozarts, such is his range. For all his personal trauma, he somehow bestows a serenity on his music, and this, along with his technical perfection, may explain his immense appeal. Ultimately, though, his magic defies critical explanation. Listen, wonder at, and enjoy.
E.B.
