In 1780 Wolfgang Amade’ Mozart (born Salzburg 1756, died Vienna 1791) was commissioned by Karl Theodore Elector of Bavaria to write his first mature grand opera on the Greek mythological subject of Idomeneo King of Crete. Mozart had hoped to write a German opera for the Elector’s court, but was told instead to write an Italian opera seria. He compensated by writing in a fuller, more Germanic style of instrumentation for the Elector’s magnificent and famous Mannheim/Munich court orchestra.

The opera premiered with success in Munich on January 29, 1781 with Mozart’s father Leopold and sister Maria Anna in attendance, but the court appointment Mozart hoped for did not happen. The dramatic and expressive style of the overture reflects the serious and heroic nature of the opera’s subject.

The concerto was commissioned by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra to be performed by Dan Levitan, our soloist, and received it’s premiere during SJCO’s 07-08 season.

In 1790 and 1795 Haydn (born Rohrau 1732, died Vienna 1809) made two trips to London at the invitation of Johann Peter Salomon compose and perform a series of works for Salomon’s concert series. During each trip he composed six symphonies, which raised the level of his symphonic work to an unparalled height and made him wildly popular with London musical audiences.

These symphonies successfully mixed folk-like melodies and humor within highly sophisticated symphonic writing. Symphony No. 104 was Haydn’s last symphony, and was premiered in King’s theater on May 4, 1705

In 1810-11 Beethoven (born Bonn, Germany 1770, died Vienna, Austria 1827) was asked to compose incidental music for two patriotic plays by Viennese playwright August von Kotzebue for the opening of a new theater in the city of Pest. The first was The Ruins of Athens and the second was King Stephen “Hungary’s first benefactor” designed as a tribute to the current Austrian-Hungarian Emperor Franz on his name day. Beethoven composed an overture and nine numbers for King Stephen, but only the heroic and lively overture has survived into the current repertory.

Ernst Bloch (born Geneva, Switzerland 1880, died Portland, Oregon 1959) was a composer known for the power, passion and expressiveness of his music. He had a wide-ranging intelligence that explored art forms other than music (particularly photography) and a wide palette of musical styles and techniques.

The Concerto Gross No. 1 was written in 1925 at the end of his tenure as Director of the Cleveland Institute of Music. The work was written for his music students and combines his awareness of the current musical trends of the time with a nostalgic look back at the techniques used by great Baroque composers.

Schubert (born Vienna, 1797, died Vienna 1828) was writing symphonies since he was thirteen years old, and he composed symphony No. 4 in April 1816 at the age of nineteen. He wrote the early symphonies to be played at musical gatherings in the homes of colleagues and friends.

At this point he was deliberately avoiding the “heroic” style of Beethoven, his older contemporary, and was writing more in the earlier “Sturm und Drang” style of earlier Haydn. Symphony No. 4 has moments of tragic gestures, but generally is an ebullient, imaginative and joyful work.

Georges Bizet (born Paris, France 1838, died Bougival near Paris 1875) is best known for his operatic masterpiece Carmen and was known during his short life as a brilliant pianist and a highly gifted composer.

His posthumous reputation, like Schubert’s, is that of an extraordinary talent who created a number of masterpieces in the time that he had.

His orchestral suite Jeux d’Enfants is an orchestration of five of the twelve movements from the piano suite of the same name written in 1871-2. The pieces are light and entertaining, with great wit and charm.

His Symphony in C is a brilliant early work written in the fall of 1855 and Winton Dean writes in his article on Bizet that “In quality and craftsmanship it has few rivals and perhaps no superior in the work of any composer of such youth.” He also praises its “freshness of attack, spontaneity of invention and technical ingenuity”.

Johann Sebastian Bach (born Eisenach, Germany 1685, died Leipzig 1750) is generally recognized as one of the greatest composers of all time. He was known during his lifetime as a great organ virtuoso, but his posthumous reputation as a composer came through his sons (particularly Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach) and later through other composers such as Mozart and Beethoven on whom he had a great influence.

He was a fine violinist, in addition to being a brilliant keyboard exponent, and wrote a number of concerti for one and two violins, which he also transcribed into harpsichord concerti. It is unclear when these were written. From 1717-23 he wrote a great deal of secular instrumental music for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cothen for an ensemble of thirteen players.

When he became General Kapellmeister for the city of Leipzig in 1723 his primary responsibilities were to provide sacred music for the city’s churches, but he also supervised the concerts of a semi-professional instrumental group called the Collegium Musicum. His concerti may have been written in Cothen and then revived in Leipzig, or they hay have originated in performances in Leipzig. It simply isn’t clear.

It is known that he wrote a concerto for oboe and violin, and that his concerto for two harpsichords in C minor is probably a transcription of that work. The concerto has since been re-transcribed twice, once in B minor and once in C minor. Our performances are of the version in C minor.

In 1791, the final year of his life, Mozart was commissioned to write an opera to be part of the ceremonies of Emperor Leopold of Austria’s coronation as Emperor of Bohemia in Prague. Leopold chose the subject of the clemency of the Roman Emperor Titus La Clemenza di Tito. Mozart temporarily set aside work on the Requiem and The Magic Flute to compose this final opera seria. It contains some of his noblest and most beautiful music, but the first performance had a lukewarm reception and the opera has never fully entered the standard repertoire, although the overture and some of the arias are heard frequently in concerts.

Earlier, in 1788, Mozart composed his three last symphonies: no. 39, no. 40 and no. 41 in C major, now known as the “Jupiter” because of the noble character of the music and the dramatic fugue at the end of the 4th movement. Because of the lack of correspondence during that year very little is known about circumstances of any performances of these symphonies, but since Mozart almost never composed anything that didn’t have a strong possibility of performance they were very likely performed at some time during the last years of his life.

Faure had a long a distinguished career as a composer pianist and teacher, mostly in Paris. He originally composed the Ballade for solo piano in 1879, and rewrote it for piano and orchestra two years later. This work, like other of Faure’s works for piano, is a direct descendent of Chopin’s nocturnes with a three-part structure of slow-fast-slow.

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) was two generations of composers after Faure’ with Debussy and Ravel among the composers of the generation in between. Milhaud originally came to prominence as one of a group of composers know as Les Six who were his friends and colleagues, but all of whom had their own distinct musical personalities and viewpoints. He was an amazingly prolific composer of works that ranged from being masterpieces to highly competent.

Le Carnival d’Aix for solo piano and orchestra is one of the former, composed of 22 very short sections of biting wit and brilliance.