Day 5: Symphony 38, Mozart

Day 5: 24 April 2012, Mozart Symphony no.38 in D, The Prague


How refreshing it is to listen to Mozart! My plan of
listening to Radio 4 on the way into work and a CD on the way home is actually having benefits: I still know a bit about what’s going on in the world, and my stress levels are not soaring whilst I’m driving amongst maniacs!!

I find Mozart just so easy to listen to. It does all the right things. If you don’t know the tune, you can hum it anyway. It’s kinda predictable but never boring. The cadences almost always resolve as you’d expect them to. The music often follows a standard format. There is always a distinct beginning, middle and end, and the end is usually heralded and obvious!

The Prague symphony was not the first of Mozart’s symphonies that I became familiar with. Like a lot of people I was first introduced to 40, but my liking for that was quoshed when I went to a performance of the Prague in a little church somewhere in Newport, with my piano teacher and a group of her piano students. The BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra were playing, but I’ve no idea what else they played as I was so transfixed by the Mozart!

I was particularly struck by the way the tune moved from one section of the orchestra to another, and generally by how it all fitted together so well. It’s a fairly typical example of a classical symphony, having 3 movements – fast-slow-fast – each being in sonata form. Some of the themes are just sublime.

The particular CD I listened to today was a recording of the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, and also included symphonies no.40 and 32. It was bought in WHSmith in the days when they used to have fantastic sales of CDs and you could pick up a real bargain – like this one, for £1.99!