Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat Major, K. 456, remains one of the hallmarks of an exceptionally productive period in the composer’s life. Completed in Vienna in September 1784, the piece was the fifth of six piano concertos Mozart wrote that year. According to his father, Leopold, Mozart composed the work for pianist Maria Theresia von Paradis. After going blind in early childhood, Paradis fashioned a successful career as a composer, singer, and keyboardist of formidable recall. She is reputed to have memorized nearly 60 concertos. While Paradis met Mozart in Salzburg two summers before the Piano Concerto No. 18 was written, it is unknown whether or not she ever received the score. There is evidence, however, of Mozart performing the work at least twice. The first purported performance in 1785 brought bravos from Emperor Joseph II and tears to the eyes of Leopold Mozart.
The sonata-form first movement of this work opens with a distinctively Mozartian series of themes that are introduced first by the strings and then by the woodwinds. Eventually, the soloist joins the exchange and helps develop the material further. The movement naturally calls for a cadenza for the soloist before the final flourish. Though these virtuosic moments frequently were left to the improvisational skill of the interpreter, two cadenzas in Mozart’s hand do survive (intended for pupils) that indicate inventive ways to feature music from earlier in the movement.
The concerto’s slow middle movement, in G minor, is structured as a theme and variations. The theme takes on the rhythmic contours of a gavotte, a courtly dance in duple meter. The orchestra states a two-part musical idea (with repeats), after which the ensemble and the pianist jointly tackle the five variations. Mozart handles the orchestra deftly throughout, often breaking it into smaller, chamber music–like groups, as in the delicious G-major Maggiore section.
The mood goes into full jocularity for the Allegro vivace rondo finale. Rhythmic tussling comes to the fore in the middle of the movement, when Mozart shifts the flutes, oboes, and bassoons to duple meter, which contrasts with the triple meter of the other instruments and the piano. All is righted by the end, however, and the concerto ends with another jolly cadenza.
The orchestral music of Franz Schubert occupies a smaller proportion of his overall output compared to his copious songs and chamber works, but its legacy in the broader symphonic tradition looms large. Like his slightly younger contemporary Felix Mendelssohn, who later became his posthumous advocate, Schubert had a deep knowledge of the orchestral feats of Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, while at the same time having the recent “storm and stress” (Sturm und Drang) of Beethoven literally in his ears. Notably, Schubert was one of the many luminaries present in 1824 for the premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, a work that has influenced (and intimidated) composers ever since.
Schubert’s symphonic works, however, are in no way derivative of his predecessors. They fuse a unique spirit of melodic invention with propensities for grandiose gestures and instrumental delicacy. He started the scores of almost 13 symphonies but completed only seven. Even those works left incomplete, like the legendary “Unfinished” Symphony in B Minor, still astound the ears with their ingenuity. Nearly all of Schubert’s symphonies were unknown to the general public during his lifetime, but their place in the repertoire is now assured.
Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944—among the most extended and challenging compositions of its time—is central to that legacy. At one time avoided or ridiculed by musicians, it remains a touchstone of every noteworthy ensemble’s performance history. The symphony is certainly Beethovenian in scope—especially in its extensive repeats—but the musical language is all Schubert’s own.
One point about this work deserves special attention. The efforts of publishers and musicologists to assign accurate “numbers” to Schubert’s later symphonies (finished or not) have resulted in somewhat confusing labels over the last two centuries, and Symphony No. 9 is a choice example. Originally, Schubert assigned it no number. The symphony became known familiarly as “Symphony No. 9,” though Johannes Brahms had it renumbered “Symphony No. 7” for an edition he later edited for the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel. The 1978 edition of the famous Deutsch catalog of Schubert’s works complicated matters further by renumbering the work as “Symphony No. 8”! Moreover, the famous appellation “Great” originated in English parlance to distinguish this work from Schubert’s Symphony No. 6—also in C major—which is nowhere near as big in scope.
Such minutiae, however, cannot detract from the greatness and grandiosity that were part of the symphony’s conception. Writing to his friend Leopold Kupelwieser in March 1824—a period marked by ailing health from syphilis and several foiled operatic projects—Schubert stated his desire to craft a “grand symphony” in the manner of his recent chamber works. The recent premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony also may have directed his focus toward grander instrumental works that did not hold the contemporary prestige of either vocal or chamber works. Labor on what would become Symphony No. 9 only began the following year, however, during Schubert’s extended holiday in the Austrian countryside during a period of stable health. The town of Gmunden, on the shores of the cliff-lined Traunsee, allegedly inspired the opening horn call of the symphony, but folk idioms abound in each movement. The composer labored ardently over the score, leaving behind evidence of extensive revising and rewriting to craft a work of supreme accomplishment and design. The final score was finished by October 1826, though the date of “1828” on the manuscript later gave rise to the idea of a lost symphony written just before Symphony No. 9. No such work can be said to have ever existed.
In October 1826, Schubert sent the finished score of Symphony No. 9 to Vienna’s illustrious Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in hopes of a performance. Though parts were prepared and at least one play-through arranged, the work never received a public debut in the composer’s lifetime. It took nearly a decade after Schubert’s death before his brother Ferdinand introduced the score to Robert Schumann, who in turn arranged the work’s premiere under Felix Mendelssohn in 1839 with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Even then, and for years after, the scope and challenges of the work prompted abridged (and frequently subpar) performances.
Like Beethoven before him, Schubert sets up many expectations of formal organization in this symphony, only to continuously upend them. The first movement famously begins with an elaborate introduction. The two horns intone a heroic theme before the strings and woodwinds join in, expanding this theme into a mini-movement in its own right. As it climaxes, however, Schubert switches gears and launches us into the actual substance of the sonata-form movement. The exposition introduces thematic ideas derived from the opening horn call. The reliance on dotted rhythms and tuplets results in inventive combinations in the central development section. After a hearty recapitulation, the opening horn call returns for the majestic coda. Schubert’s use of three trombones is highly innovative for this movement and the symphony as a whole. Beethoven employed trombones—formally an instrument for sacred music and opera—in his Ninth Symphony for dramatic effect, and Schubert continued the precedent in this work.
The slow second movement, in A minor, presents two central musical units that contrast the strings and woodwinds. Schubert then recapitulates both units in a more elaborate form that interweaves the instrument groups in a richer and more dissonant texture. Dotted rhythms again abound in this movement, as do call-and-response and highly subtle but unexpected harmonic developments.
This symphony features one of the sturdiest scherzo movements Schubert ever wrote. Like the Scherzo of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the musical ideas are extensive in their structure (enhanced by Schubert’s directions for repeats) but always rollicking in tone and sentiment amid its ambitious architecture.
All this culminates in the grand final movement, which Schubert casts in a modified sonata form that juggles multiple melodic ideas, including subtle quotations from Beethoven’s Ninth. Repetitions drive home the main ideas of Schubert’s musical syntax, which reaches its ultimate fruition in the last glorious cadence in C major.
—Ryan M. Prendergast