MOZART’S SYMPHONY NO. 40

Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC) Auditorium 3

Saturday, October 9 2021, 5:00pm and 7:30pm

Lionel Schmit, concertmaster and conductor

German Diaz Blanco, oboe

PROGRAMME

GIOACHINO ANTONIO ROSSINI: The Barber of Seville: Overture(1792 - 1868)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: Concerto in C Major for Oboe and (1756 - 1791) Orchestra, K.314 (285d)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K.550 I. Molto Allegro II. Andante III. Menuetto. Allegretto IV. Finale. Allegro Assai

Out of respect for the musicians and fellow audience members please silence your mobile phones. Applause between move-ments is not customary. Please also refrain from flash photography. Seating begins 30 minutes before performances. Late-comers cannot be seated during the concert. The Philharmonic retains the right to expel anyone disturbing other concertgoers.

GIOACHINO ANTONIO ROSSINI(1792- 1868)

The Barber of Seville: Overture

The Barber of Seville (1815) of Rossini is the greatest comic opera ever. Many of Rossini’s operas are rarely performed, but The Barber of Seville has continued to be displayed on the world stage without interruption.

The Barber of Seville is the first of a trio of plays by the playwright Pomarche, con-sidered subversive in the late 1700s, in which the nobles were exposed as leop-ards manipulated by their feline servants.

The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart’s opera on the second of the trio, was written in 1786. However, Rossini’s opera, not Mo-zart’s, is the occasion of the Comedian Aria with Largo the Factotum, with the famous call, “Figaro-Figaro-Figaro.” The barber in the opera was named Esbiglio.

The novel presents the effort of the Count Almaviva to win the heart of the beautiful little Rosina, who falls under the tutelage of Dr. Bartolo, who wants her for himself. Arria La Calunya comes

with Don Bartolio, who collaborates with Dr. Bartolo to explain how the spread of gossip will destroy the chances of Count Almaviva to win Rosina’s heart. Rossini’s music successfully gives life to the drama written in the text.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART(1756–1791)

Concerto in C Major for Oboe andOrchestra, K.314 (285d)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Concerto in C Major, K. 314 was originally composed in the spring or summer of 1777 for oboist Giuseppe Ferlendis from Bergamo, then reworked by the composer as a con-certo for flute in D Major in 1778.

The concerto is a widely studied piece for both instruments and is one of the more important concerti for the oboe. As with his Flute Concerto No. 1, the piece is arranged for a standard set of orchestral strings, two oboes, and two horns.

While the original version for oboe had been lost before Alfred Einstein wrote his seminal work, Mozart: His Character, His Work, the oboe origin of the flute concerto was suspected, in part because of references in letters to a now-missing oboe concerto, as Einstein wrote, and of similar details in the orchestral string lines which suggested a transposition was used. Also, Einstein noted the two

scores in D Major and C Major of the K. 314 Concerto in the Library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, which led to the belief that the oboe concerto was the origin of the flute concerto. The orchestra parts of the composition and solo oboe part in C were rediscovered by Bernhard Paumgartner in Salzburg, in 1920.

Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K.550

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote all his symphonies in major keys except two: his No. 25 and his No. 40, which are both in G Minor—although to the 8-year-old Mozart is attributed a first symphonic piece in A Minor, the Odense Symphony. For this reason, the 25th and the 40th are sometimes referred to as respectively the Little G Minor and the Great G Minor. The Little appellation does not characterize the 25th’s length, but rather a foretaste of what the Great G Minor will bring in terms of fury and of piercing pain.

The Little’s violent, uncompromising language was to be reiterated in the famous Symphony No. 40. Written by Mozart three weeks after the Symphony No. 39, it was completed July 25, 1788. Indeed, Mozart’s three last symphonies were finished in a two-month period. Symphony No. 40 came after the epic moments of spirituality of Symphony No. 39 in E Flat Major, but with a completely different tone and atmosphere. Mozart chose the G Minor tonality to develop a tragic anxiousness, nonetheless, expressed in an unsurpassable, melancholic graciousness. One

particularity about the symphony is that its score was reworked with an addendum. A clarinet part—largely a recast of the oboe parts—was added, a singularity quite unusual for a symphony before Beethoven.

As was customary in Mozart’s time, the symphony is in four parts: fast movement, slow movement, minuet, and fast movement. The first is in the classical sonata form, as are the andante and the finale. The allegro molto launches with the famous opening theme, which is both pathetic and unutterably wistful. It is whispered by the violins over a rhythmic murmur, given to the unceasing feverish bass strings. The development works on the theme and focuses more and more closely on its first three notes. The harmony gains chromatic and anguished strain until a long descent of the flute in dialogue with the clarinets sends us into the recapitulation and a second, dark theme in G Minor.

The second movement, in E Flat Major, is a lyrical work in 6/8 time. Violas begin with an idea in repeated notes, but second and first violins join them in imitation at successively higher pitches. The textured andante continues to explore the first movement’s throbbing harmonies in a more discreet manner. Its gravity is counterbalanced by the A-B-A minuet. Its wild pugnacity gives to admire the provoking contrapuntal elegance of its different parts: the A parts frame a charming central trio, willingly ingenious and nostalgic.

The finale, in an allegro assai tempo, sets of with an ascendant fast arpeggio—an apprehensive interrogation which is constantly and alternately answered by the same short, imperious musical phrase. This suffuses the movement’s atmosphere with a sort of feverish anger. No conclusive coda comes to appease the tension but the movement, like the whole symphony, appears subdued by a rule of beauty and a sovereign grace.

It is thought that Beethoven was inspired by Mozart’s last movement when he wrote his own Symphony No. 5. Indeed, in 1887 Gustav Nottebohm observed that Beethoven had copied bars of it amid the sketches of his Fifth Symphony, whose third movement begins with a pitch sequence like that of Mozart’s finale. Mozart’s Great G Minor is today an icon of classical music. Immensely popular, it is his most-performed symphonic work. Its vehemence and genius are the fruit of artistic mastery at its peak, one that has never failed to seduce the generations since its creation.

Lionel Schmit, concertmaster and conductor

Renowned for his phenomenological ap-proach to music, the French violinist Lionel Schmit likes to think about his work that it is more sounds than notes: Ouest France quoted “His rich and subtle sonority acts like a magic spell”.

This deep and holistic approach started with obtaining the highest distinctions of the Conservatory of Paris in 1997, thanks to the meeting of Ivry Gitlis but espe-cially of Michael Hentz, heir and close to Sergiu Celibidache until his death. His fertile ground was shaped when he was a 7 year old boy in Metz, thanks to Patricia Reibaud and his mentor Nadezhda Besh-kina (professor at the Tchaikovsky con-servatory of Moscow).

Later he went to the Conservatoire Na-tional Supérieur in Paris in the class of Devy Erlih, and achieved his cursus with the pre-PHD of Régis Pasquier. Lionel is also a laureate of the international competition T.Varga, R.Lipizer and young European soloists, where he won the gold medal. He is supported by Foun-

dations such as the Cziffra Foundation, Fondation de France, Fond instrumental français, Fondation Zilber, etc. A Curious and unclassifiable artist, he has been increasing the wealth of his experience with the symphonic repertoire since his earliest childhood. Invited for many years as concertmeister of various orchestras such as the Opéra de Marseille, the Or-chestre National de Lyon, the Tasmanian Symphonic Orchestra, La Monnaie de Bruxelles, the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. Additionally, he has been the concertmeister of the Luxembourg Cham-ber Orchestra since 2012.

From September 2019, Schmit joined the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra as 1st con-certmeister.

An eclectic violinist, his repertoire rang-es from chamber music to soloist rep-ertoire, from contemporary music to electro-acoustic and tango with the en-counter of Richard Galliano.

In the area of recording, “The Rothschild violin” is the project that most obviously characterizes his artistic approach.

Lionel Schmit plays a violin by Domeni-cus Busan, made in Venice around 1770, graciously loaned by the Ghasarossian company

German Diaz Blanco, oboe

Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1986. He started his music studies at the age of 8, at the “Professional Conservatory” of Tenerife, He later joined the “Reina Sofia College of Music” in Madrid under the tutoring of Professor Hansjörg Schellenberger and Víctor Anchel, being awarded as best student in 2009.

In the same year, Germán Díaz moved to Munich after joining the academy of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, where he had lessons with Stefan Schilli and Ramon Ortega; and he played under the baton of conductors such as David Zinman, Mariss Jansons, Bernard Haitink, Sir Colin David and Andris Nelsons on tours in Europe and Asia.

Díaz Blanco has collaborated as principal oboist with many orchestras such as: Seoul Philharmonic, Musikcollegium Win-terthur, Royal Scottish National Orches-tra, Bach Collegium München, Camerata Salzburg, and Symphony Orchestra of Tenerife (where he was invited to per-form as soloist the oboe concerto from B. A. Zimmerman).

As a chamber music player, he is regularly invited to perform with Plural Ensemble (Madrid) and Quantum Ensemble (Tener-ife). He won several prizes in internation-al oboe competitions as well, including Third Prize in the International Oboe Competition “Giuseppe Tomassini” in Petritoli (Italy, 2010), and Special Prize of the Jury in the International Oboe Compe-tition “Gheorghe Dima”.Has been invited to teach and perform in numerous festivals and universities such as “Nonaka Actus” (Tokyo, 2010), “Suwon University” (South Korea), “OFF Festival” (Slovenia, 2012) “Festival Piero Bellugi” y “Campus Musicale Lunigiana” (Italy, 2014); “Conservatorio Superior de Músi-ca de Canarias” and “Festival de Música Orotava” (Spain, since 2016).

Since 2014, Diaz Blanco is the principal oboe of the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, invited to perform Strauss oboe concerto in October 2017.