He was one of the most gifted and prolific composers not only of his age but of any age.
And this irresistible Sunday afternoon programme brings together three absolute treats from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart which together showcase his expansive repertoire.
You can learn more about what to expect in our programme notes which this year are being presented in a new and accessible way.
This companion page draws together a range of complementary content which we hope will help shine additional light on the pieces, the people who composed them and the performers bringing them to life here in Hope Street.
Domingo Hindoyan
Domingo Hindoyan continues his inaugural concert season at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall with this all-Mozart Sunday afternoon programme.
This concert is one of Classic FM’s 30 highlight concerts from its partner orchestras during 2022.
Hindoyan was born and raised in Venezuela where his father Domingo Garcia is a violinist with and former president of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Venezuela and a professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela.
He first studied the violin through the El Sistema programme and played in both the Simón Bolívar and West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, before studying conducting at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève where he gained a high distinction.
Along with his performances in Liverpool, this season he is also conducting Puccini’s Tosca in Dresden, Umberto Giordano’s Siberia in Madrid and Bellini’s Norma in Barcelona as well as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Cadogan Hall.
Kit Armstrong
The gifted American pianist and composer Kit Armstrongtakes centre stage in this concert which opens the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s March programme.
Armstrong, one of Pianist Magazine’s four pianists to look out for in 2022, was a child prodigy who made his performing debut with the Long Beach Bach Festival Orchestra at just eight and attended university at nine, studying biology, physics and maths alongside music.
He moved to London aged 12 and at the grand old age of 16 he received a first at the Royal Academy of Music – while concurrently studying maths across the road at Imperial College!
A teenage Armstrong also came under the wing of the great Alfred Brendel after approaching him at a concert.
As a soloist, the just turned 30-year-old (he celebrated his big birthday between concerts right here in Liverpool) has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras as well as being in demand as a recitalist.
He is also an award-winning composer; works include a symphony, five concertos, six quintets, seven quartets and more than 20 solo pieces.
Listen to a nine-year-old Kit Armstrong playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 24 in C minor – with his own cadenza.
Overture, The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro was based on a subversive French play, La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro, written by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais in 1778.
Mozart expressed his ambition to do opera in many of his letters – and in 1783 he met Lorenzo da Ponte who had been appointed court poet in Vienna.
It was da Ponte who created the libretto for an operatic version of de Beaumarchais’ social and sexual satire.
Interestingly, while the overture is traditionally the place where a composer introduces some of the main themes and motifs from the production to come, the bright and bubbly Overture to The Marriage of Figaro is a self-contained entity although it does encapsulate beautifully the atmosphere of the main opera.
Did you know? Figaro’s famous aria non piú andrai is performed as part of the annual Trooping the Colour ceremony which marks the Queen’s official birthday.
Listen to the Overture from The Marriage of Figaro.
Piano Concerto No 20 in D minor
Every year was a prolific one for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , but 1785 was the start of two remarkable and creative years for the ebullient Austrian.
Mozart once described Vienna in a letter to his father Leopold as “the land of the piano”, and it was certainly a fruitful place for him when it came to both performing and composing some of his greatest masterpieces on the instrument.
He had already completed five piano concertos in 1784, and he followed them in 1785 in three piano concertos, a Fantasia for Piano in C minor and a Quartet in G minor for piano and strings as well as two string quartets.
In the next 12 months meanwhile, Mozart would produce three more piano concertos along with his Prague Symphony…oh, and a little opera buffa called The Marriage of Figaro.
The Piano Concerto No 20 in D minor was given its premiere at a subscribers concert in February 1785 with the composer as soloist. In true Mozart fashion, the ink was barely dry – literally - on the orchestral score.
It’s notable as being one of only two piano concertos he wrote in a minor key, the other being his Concerto No 24 in C minor.
The stormy and romantic D minor work’s opening allegro has a long orchestral section with syncopated rhythms and an unsettling, restless air before the piano arrives to take up the theme.
The ‘romanze’ second movement includes a lovely lyrical and tender melody in B flat major with virtuoso passages for the soloist which is interrupted by an abrupt burst of turbulence in G minor before the romantic melody returns, while the final allegro assai (meaning very fast) opens with a dramatic rippling piano arpeggio and develops a menacing air before ending with a coda in unexpected but sunny and optimistic D major.
Did you know? The concerto’s second movement was used beneath the closing titles of the Oscar-winning 1984 film Amadeus.
Watch a performance of the opening allegro from the Piano Concerto No 20 in D minor.
Symphony No 41 ‘Jupiter’
Mozart’s last – and longest – symphony is regarded by some as one of the greatest works in the symphonic canon.
It was composed in the summer of 1788, and was, amazingly (even for Mozart) the last of no fewer than three symphonies which he wrote in just two months. Even more remarkable was the fact that at the same time he was also writing a pair of piano trios and a piano sonata.
At least some of this explosion of creativity can be explained by the fact Mozart was in debt and was desperate to generate some income to help support his family.
The exuberant and emotionally resonant Symphony No 41 in C major is believed to have received its nickname ‘Jupiter’ from German composer, conductor and violinist Johann Peter Salomon who made an early arrangement of it for the piano.
The first movement opens with a trio of loud drum rolls, followed by the contrasting gentleness of a violin phrase, and develops with military rhythms, trumpets and drums juxtaposed by a softer theme which wind through woodwind and strings.
It’s followed by a lyrical and expressive andante which includes a soaring duet between flute and violin and a gentle, melancholy theme which becomes darkly disquieting as it moves from F major to C minor.
The symphony’s textured third movement is a menuetto allegretto, similar to a Landler - a dance fans of The Sound of Music will be familiar with.
Here, Mozart merges fugue and sonata form (something also done by Haydn) and introduces the key Gregorian-style C-D-F-E figure in the trio section which returns as the foundation of a final movement whose intricate instrumental contrapuntal lines spiral towards an exhilarating fugal coda.
Did you know? Mozart composed his first symphony in 1764, aged eight, while his family were in London as part of a European tour. In 1939, a plaque was erected on the house at 180 Ebury Street in Belgravia where it was written.
Listen to the opening allegro vivace from Symphony No 41 in C major.