Mozart: Flute Quartet in D major, K. 285
Frustrated with the limited career opportunities in his native Salzburg, a 21-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart abandoned his post in the Archbishop’s court to pursue fortune abroad. His circuitous journey with his mother included an extended sojourn in Mannheim, where Mozart was introduced to the wealthy surgeon Ferdinand De Jean, also an amateur flautist. Mozart’s father was relieved when De Jean commissioned his son for three concertos and four quartets, but Mozart fils bemoaned the task, writing, “I become quite powerless when I am obliged to write for an instrument I can’t stand.” Dragging his feet, Mozart produced only two flute concertos of the promised three, but De Jean refused to pay for one of them when he realized it was merely a transposition of the extant Oboe Concerto, K. 314.
In spite of his purported distaste for the flute, Mozart fashioned a delightfully buoyant Flute Quartet in D major, K. 285, whose sparkling outer movements sandwich a slow movement of remarkable poignancy. Some listeners have suggested a foretaste in that Adagio of the second movement of Mozart’s eventual A major Piano Concerto, K. 488, pointing to a vague resemblance between the melodic contour and sparse accompaniments of the two movements. But a more useful comparison might be found in the Largo movement of Vivaldi’s “Winter” violin concerto, where the suspended solo line shimmers over a naked pizzicato texture, as here. In the Flute Quartet, this Baroque-style aria’s position between two more spirited movements replete with Mozart’s typical cast of quicksilver characters amplifies its austere grace, and explains why we perceive a similar sort of poetry in the second movements of this Quartet and the later Piano Concerto, alike.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for Chamber Music Northwest
Frustrated with the limited career opportunities in his native Salzburg, a 21-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart abandoned his post in the Archbishop’s court to pursue fortune abroad. His circuitous journey with his mother included an extended sojourn in Mannheim, where Mozart was introduced to the wealthy surgeon Ferdinand De Jean, also an amateur flautist. Mozart’s father was relieved when De Jean commissioned his son for three concertos and four quartets, but Mozart fils bemoaned the task, writing, “I become quite powerless when I am obliged to write for an instrument I can’t stand.” Dragging his feet, Mozart produced only two flute concertos of the promised three, but De Jean refused to pay for one of them when he realized it was merely a transposition of the extant Oboe Concerto, K. 314.
In spite of his purported distaste for the flute, Mozart fashioned a delightfully buoyant Flute Quartet in D major, K. 285, whose sparkling outer movements sandwich a slow movement of remarkable poignancy. Some listeners have suggested a foretaste in that Adagio of the second movement of Mozart’s eventual A major Piano Concerto, K. 488, pointing to a vague resemblance between the melodic contour and sparse accompaniments of the two movements. But a more useful comparison might be found in the Largo movement of Vivaldi’s “Winter” violin concerto, where the suspended solo line shimmers over a naked pizzicato texture, as here. In the Flute Quartet, this Baroque-style aria’s position between two more spirited movements replete with Mozart’s typical cast of quicksilver characters amplifies its austere grace, and explains why we perceive a similar sort of poetry in the second movements of this Quartet and the later Piano Concerto, alike.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for Chamber Music Northwest