On the symphonies
By Adam Fischer
KV 124 Dated Salzburg, 21 February 1772
KV 124 is the music of YOUTHFUL REBELLION. The sun bursts out even in the fifth bar. The refined simplicity infusing the third movement is addictive. The last movement sends the blood coursing through your veins. Listeners prone to high blood pressure should consult their doctors or pharmacists first.
KV 128 Written in Salzburg, May 1772
KV 128 is THE MOST PECULIAR: sudden omens of fateful happenings, presages of death in the first act, and then the sun bursting through again. You return to earthy joie-de-vivre, you dance, sing, and stamp your feet.
KV 129 Written in Salzburg, May 1772
The first movement of KV 129 is MUSIC FOR TAUNTING BY. It is as if Mozart wants to tease us, and really relishes doing so. The second movement is a jewel. Nobody can banish the theme from his mind. Any other 18th century composer would have envied Mozart this theme, and rightly so.
KV 130 Written in Salzburg, May 1772
KV 130 is perhaps THE MOST SERENE. Again the sudden omens of death in the last movement, but it makes peace with them. Soothing, confiding fear of death, so to speak. The flutes in the second movement sound like somebody caressing a face. Here, too, the young hothead displays calm and patience.
KV 132 dated Salzburg, July 1772
KV 132 is a symphony in E-flat, and that is always something special – it is the key of The Magic Flute. The first movement has a certain rigour – the sighs of the second subject are not of sadness, rather of serene clarity. One feels reconciled with life. The strangely pulsating second movement also evokes serenity. There is no revolt here. Calm enters and pervades the restlessness. The minuet is wonderfully witty and human, the violins compete with one another, then suddenly they lose the plot and stop. Music which to the noble audience of Mozart’s time probably seemed ill-bred and rather cheeky. And then the trio with its sober premonitions – a soupçon of Schubert, sort of en passant. The fourth movement, a rondo with its gay, whiplash-like main theme. I am sure that after the concert the nobility would have gone home softly whistling this theme. It would not have let them alone.
KV 133 dated Salzburg, July 1772
KV 133, with its ‘trilling’ first movement of dazzling sunlight. Mediterranean music, the trumpets vie with the horns, everyone has to join the fray. In the trills I hear cicadas. The second movement with the flutes is enchanting. Music that constantly aspires upward like a fine little rocket. The flute like a lark high up in the sky, and as soon as the minuet begins everyone joins in this upward striving, happy and jubilant. The last movement is the wittiest; the main theme has some gentle fun with a stammerer – one who can’t get past the first note.
KV 134 dated Salzburg, August 1772
KV 134, a sunny, blue symphony in A major. The beginning is like a fountain, the water bubbles, wells up, shoots forth. In the second movement the fountain falls calm. The water just purls, a soft breeze ripples the surface. It is spring. The air is scented with lilacs. In the third movement the couple dance decorously in the park beside the fountain, in the fourth movement no longer so decorously. They vanish into the labyrinth, play like two cats and are happy. So are we.
KV 161a dated Salzburg, 30. March 1773
KV 161a, E-flat, the next ‘Magic Flute symphony’. The first movement is simple, clear, the music winged and bouncy. In the second movement you can feel the butterflies flutter by. Then the wonderfully slow middle movement with the delicate sighs, a touching vulnerability with the sensitively swelling yearning of the violins; and the final movement with its unspoiled joy, with its bliss. The music floats and flies with an inevitability that we can fly with in our dreams. It is a dream.