After such a successful start to his compositional career, it seemed that van Otterloo might pursue that path in earnest; however, he went on to complete fewer than a dozen works and virtually ceased composing altogether twelve years later. Instead, he chose to focus on conducting. Shortly after joining the Utrecht City Orchestra, he began leading the ensemble as assistant conductor, before becoming the principal conductor five years later. He found tremendous success on the podium throughout Europe, South America, and Asia in the decades that followed, conducting orchestras in Berlin, Vienna, La Scala (Milan), Madrid, Denmark, Lisbon, Paris, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires. In 1949, van Otterloo was appointed chief conductor of the Residentie Orkest in The Hague, and held that prestigious national position until 1973. He also taught at the Royal Conservatoire at The Hague for many years. After a long professional tenure in his native country, van Otterloo eventually relocated to Australia and lived there for the remainder of his life. He held two major posts there, serving first as music director of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra until 1970, followed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, until his untimely death in an automobile accident at age seventy-one.

Throughout his lifetime, van Otterloo was held in high esteem internationally as a conductor, earning awards from numerous countries, to include appointment to the Dutch Order of Orange-Nassau and the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands; the Order of the Dannebrog in Denmark; and the Legion of Honor in France. He is remembered also for the many outstanding recordings he made with some of the finest orchestras around the world, especially those with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic.

Despite his extremely limited output as a composer, a few of his original works have entered the standard repertoire, especially those he composed for chamber ensembles. The most famous of these is his Sinfonietta for sixteen wind instruments, composed in 1943. The following year, he penned a substantial piece for brass instruments, harp, and percussion, first entitled Divertimento. Sometime after its completion, van Otterloo added a significant piano and celesta part and retitled the piece Serenade, resulting in the definitive version of the work.

The Serenade was the final piece that van Otterloo completed, although at the time he was only thirty-six years old. The years 1943 and 1944 were a tumultuous time for him personally: he was divorced from his second wife, Anette, in April of 1943, only to remarry her the following year. The Serenade comes from this period of instability, and although there are hints of conflict and strife woven into the work, the tone of the piece is one of strength and a unique brand of rough-hewn heroism and optimism.

… although there are hints of conflict and strife woven into the work, the tone of the piece is one of strength and a unique brand of rough-hewn heroism and optimism.

“It is difficult to express adequately what all musicians felt about this great woman who looked like a queen among pianists—and played like a goddess.” - Henry Wood

Carreño was born in Caracas, and her early musical education came from her father, Manuel Antonio Carreño, who was a politician and talented amateur pianist. The young Carreño displayed uncommon natural abilities at the piano, and when a revolution in Venezuela forced the family to immigrate to the United States in 1862, it provided her the opportunity to continue her musical pursuits in New York City. She met the American pianist and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who championed her abilities. Within a year, Carreño made her professional debut, at age eight, at Irving Hall in New York, performing a full recital that included some of Gottschalk’s music. In the fall of 1863, she performed at the White House for President Abraham Lincoln.

For the next four years, the musical wunderkind toured North America and Cuba. In 1866, Carreño’s family decided to move with her to Paris so that she might establish herself in Europe. Her years in Paris were incredibly fruitful; not only did Carreño perform extensively throughout the continent, but she also crossed paths with several prominent musicians of the day, including Charles Gounod, Franz Liszt, and Gioachino Rossini. She even studied voice with Rossini and, as was the case with the piano, took to it with incredible facility. Throughout the 1870s, she continued her development as a singer and unexpectedly appeared as the Queen in a Scottish production of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots when the leading soprano fell ill. Most significantly, in 1876, after her return to the United States, Carreño appeared as Zerlina in a production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni in New York.

As Gottschalk had done for her, Carreño fervently advocated for the music of one of her American students, Edward MacDowell, and premièred many of his pieces in America and Europe. MacDowell’s Piano Concerto No. 2 was dedicated to Carreño, and the work became a major cornerstone in her touring repertoire. Carreño triumphantly returned to her native Venezuela in 1885 to perform for the first time since her childhood; however, by the late 1880s, her popularity as a soloist had waned in the United States. She was eager to return to Europe to rekindle that status and relocated to Germany where she debuted with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1889, performing Grieg’s Piano Concerto along with works by Robert Schumann and Carl Maria von Weber. This concert launched a successful thirty-year period in Germany for Carreño, one that also reaffirmed her reputation among European and American audiences as one of the most brilliant musicians of her time.

Carreño and her fourth husband Arturo Tagliapietra finally returned to live in New York City in September 1916, in preparation for concerts planned across the United States and Cuba. That same year, Carreño once again was invited to the White House, more than fifty years after her debut there, this time to perform for President Woodrow Wilson. The following spring, she traveled to Havana, but became ill and was forced to return to New York, where she was diagnosed with diplopia. Her condition worsened rapidly, and she passed away in her apartment at age sixty-three.

“You have no idea how difficult it is to arrange a work of this kind for wind instruments, so that it suits these instruments and loses none of its effect.” -Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Despite Mozart’s lamentation of the difficulty in transcribing a full orchestra work for a handful of winds alone, the composer was clearly interested in the musical potential and money-making appeal of these little bands, and he quickly contributed three new works to the medium, all composed under the umbrella of the Classical serenade. Whether composed for winds or strings, the serenades of the time were expected to be somewhat lighter in tone and largely designed for entertainment and social occasions. In his own vernacular, Mozart probably considered a serenade to be closer to a symphonic work than a divertimento, and as was often the case with Mozart’s music, he took these forms to new heights as compared to his contemporaries, by way of both the scope and complexity of his musical ideas. The Serenade in E-flat, K. 375 and the Serenade in C minor, K. 388 are excellent examples of Mozart’s inimitable musical genius, even in composing for the relatively new Harmoniemusik medium. While both of these serenades contain breathtakingly original ideas, their length and form still fall rather neatly within the parameters of a Classical serenade, and they both were composed for the conventional eight winds of the Harmonie. However, it was his Serenade No. 10 in B-flat, K. 361, composed from 1781 to 1782, that significantly departed from all conventional expectation at the time and played a central role in setting the stage for the serious development of wind ensemble music in the century after Mozart’s death.

The Serenade No. 10 bears the subtitle of Gran Partita. However, this moniker was added to the autograph score by an unknown hand many years after Mozart’s death. Although the now-famous title for this landmark work was not the composer’s own, it is quite fitting. Not only did the work notably employ a larger instrumentation than was normal at the time—adding two basset horns (a lower cousin of the clarinet), two additional horns, and double bass—the breadth of the serenade was unlike his wind octets. Most serenades of the time were intended to be performed in the background at social events, but Mozart’s Gran Partita was cut from an entirely different cloth. With seven diverse movements instead of the usual three or four, and with a typical performance time of fifty minutes, this piece was clearly designed to be more than a soundtrack for a soirée. The work may owe its grand scope to the fact that the composer was hoping the Emperor himself would attend the première, given in 1784 at the home of Mozart’s friend, clarinetist Anton Stadler. Mozart was well aware of the Emperor’s love of wind music and was no doubt looking to impress him with this innovative piece for the new medium. Mozart included a little bit of every compositional skill that he possessed at the time in the Gran Partita. The slow introduction showcases a symphonic grandeur that could well have begun the overture to one of his operas, and it is followed by a substantial opening Allegro molto. The pair of minuets include two unique trio sections each, creatively composed for little ensembles within the full ensemble, highlighting every section of the group. The two slow movements are among the most beautiful Mozart ever composed (the first of which was prominently featured in the 1984 film Amadeus). Mozart threw in an impressive Theme and Variations movement for good measure and concluded this monumental opus with a raucous Rondo in the fashionable “Turkish” style.