Books, Arts & Manners: Mozart and Verdi

I have been listening to a recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in E Flat (K. 482), which, by coincidence, was sent to me from Italy by Jon Carter, a devoted enthusiast of soloist and conductor Paul Badura-Skoda, just as I was preparing to review a new Cost Fan Tutte. I say “by coincidence” because Badura-Skoda’s finely wrought rendition of Mozart’s most famous concerto underscores what the critic Edward Dent wrote some five decades ago—that the concerto form was a “deliberate adaptation of the grand operatic aria,” with voice against ensemble becoming instrument against orchestra.

Mozart’s greatest and most personal musical utterances were in opera and the concerto. But it is significant and interesting that Mozart, having drawn his orchestral voice from opera, returned the compliment by injecting into his operatic works the devices of symphonic expression. On his stage, each scene is developed with the logic of the symphonist, heightening the dramatic and musical impact. His finales are completely orchestral, the joined voices used as instruments with little thought to the words that are being sung. To this, of course, Mozart added his exquisite sense of melody, of the melodic line, which reached its apotheosis in the “Et incarnatus est,” the heart-piercing arioso of the Great Mass in C Minor.

RT

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Ralph de Toledano

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I have been listening to a recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in E Flat (K. 482), which, by coincidence, was sent to me from Italy by Jon Carter, a devoted enthusiast of soloist and conductor Paul Badura-Skoda, just as I was preparing to review a new Cost Fan Tutte. I say “by coincidence” because Badura-Skoda’s finely wrought rendition of Mozart’s most famous concerto underscores what the critic Edward Dent wrote some five decades ago—that the concerto form was a “deliberate adaptation of the grand operatic aria,” with voice against ensemble becoming instrument against orchestra.

Mozart’s greatest and most personal musical utterances were in opera and the concerto. But it is significant and interesting that Mozart, having drawn his orchestral voice from opera, returned the compliment by injecting into his operatic works the devices of symphonic expression. On his stage, each scene is developed with the logic of the symphonist, heightening the dramatic and musical impact. His finales are completely orchestral, the joined voices used as instruments with little thought to the words that are being sung. To this, of course, Mozart added his exquisite sense of melody, of the melodic line, which reached its apotheosis in the “Et incarnatus est,” the heart-piercing arioso of the Great Mass in C Minor.