10. Symphony Concert

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sinfonie Nr. 39 Es-Dur KV 543
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sinfonie Nr. 40 g-Moll KV 550
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sinfonie Nr. 41 C-Dur KV 551 »Jupiter«

Our concert season concludes with the triad of Mozart’s last and individually distinctive symphonies – music that without question is among the most exquisite of the Classical era, even though Mozart’s contemporaries were more confounded by it than impressed. With these later works, Mozart proved that he was ahead of his time, which also meant that his fine-honed symphonic pieces were hardly understood and thus rarely performed. Stylistically speaking, this genre-crowning triumvirate – the overconfident joie de vivre in E-flat major, the tender, melancholic elegance in G minor and the radiant triumph in C major – had long outgrown the stylistic definitions of the day. In view of how true and unrestrained his ideas flow forth, it is vividly clear that Mozart was unrivalled in Vienna in 1788. Mozart succeeded in combining homophony and polyphony, Baroque and classical music traditions into one perfect symbiosis – a Jupiter who would soon be followed by Beethoven’s Prometheus Unbound.