Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Born in 1756 in Salzburg, Austria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is probably best known as a quintessential child prodigy. He composed his first piece at the age of five, and during his short 35-year life, he produced over 800 works. But he wasn’t just quick off the mark and impressively productive, he was also a hugely innovative, progressive, and bold composer, making him one of the most influential figures in classical music history.

He’s also become well known today for his boisterous personality, thanks in large part to the 1984 film Amadeus and the unforgettable laugh of Tom Hulce. While the film does take many historical liberties, as most do, it nevertheless presents a delightful and surprisingly truthful portrayal of Mozart the man. Exuberant, playful, and at times even childish, he was by all accounts a joyous, deeply feeling person, brimming with humor, mischief, and vitality. He loved a good laugh, as well as a well-timed practical joke.

All of this shines through in his music. The range of emotions he conjures and speed at which he sometimes bounds from playful levity to tender love, to dramatic angst (and back again) is truly captivating. Perhaps this is why instrumentalists, when learning Mozart in school, are so often reminded by their teachers: “Remember, Mozart was an opera composer.” Of course, that’s not all he was. He wrote some 41 symphonies, 27 piano concertos, and countless other solo and chamber works. But we think of him first and foremost as a composer of opera precisely because he wore his heart on his sleeve—and in his manuscripts. He wrote for every instrument as if it were a singing voice, and there is always a sense that this is the lens through which he approached all his music.

Overture to Le nozze di Figaro (1786)

Run Time: Approx. 5 minutes

Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro is based on the play The Mad Day, or the Marriage of Figaro by French playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. Written in 1778, the comedy had become rather popular across Europe, in part because of its risqué content. The story combines sharp political satire heavily criticizing aristocratic privilege, with overt sexual themes; it angered Louis XVI so much that it was banned in France for three years. Though fairly tame by today’s standards, it rather scandalized the 18th-century bourgeoisie, so naturally, audiences were clamoring to see it.

And so, when Mozart was seeking a story on which to base a new opera, he and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte were unsurprisingly drawn to the alluring tale. Da Ponte, with whom Mozart would go on to collaborate on two more operas, removed much of the political commentary, likely to avoid provoking King Louis’s censorious quill, but the raciness remained, providing just the right amount of ridiculous sauce to delight the then-29-year-old Mozart.

The story unfolds over the course of a single day. Figaro—now a valet in Count Almaviva’s household, years after the events of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (based on another play by the same author)—is preparing to marry a maid named Susanna. The trouble is that the Count is bent on seducing her first, and when the Countess discovers his plan, she sets out to teach him a lesson. Naturally, chaos ensues. The farcical comedy has much the same sense of humor as Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, full of mistaken identity, poorly executed disguises, and all sorts of ridiculous antics.

The music Mozart composed for his overture uses no material from the opera itself, yet it perfectly captures the tone of what the audience is about to witness. Right from the outset, it’s bustling and frenetic, evoking the mood of a busy household preparing for a lavish wedding. But Mozart, like his characters, gets up to a bit of mischief. The opening theme in the bassoons and strings almost seems to chase itself, scrambling after its own tail. Then—bam! The brass and timpani pounce and the orchestra comes barreling in. Everyone’s caught in a musical game of cat and mouse. Throughout the overture, the mood shifts at lightning speed. At times, there are unexpected accents on “wrong” beats that serve as little musical jump scares. Mozart is playing with the audience the same way the characters are about to chase each other around the stage. It’s a perfect prelude to the chaos to come, and a brilliant little microcosm of the opera itself.

Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major (1785)

Run Time: Approx. 31 minutes

Part of being a child prodigy in 18th-century Europe meant that Mozart spent much of his early life traveling and performing for aristocrats. As he began to add “composer” to his growing resume—alongside violinist and pianist—he started writing concertos for himself, mainly as a vehicle to demonstrate his own virtuosity.

The first movement is the perfect Classical concerto Allegro if there ever was one. It’s elegant and playful, full of vivid character contrasts and glimmering technical passages. True to the conventions of the time, the piano and orchestra alternate back and forth in a polite dialogue, they do not compete for the spotlight. Mozart makes us wait a while for the piano to enter, but when it does, the orchestra immediately cedes the stage and the piano takes over with long passages of little to no accompaniment. Here, Mozart the opera composer comes out—the movement is like a great soprano aria, full of drama and beautifully singing lines.

The film Amadeus contains one of my favorite passages about Mozart’s music. In this scene, rival composer Antonio Salieri begrudgingly fawns over a particularly exquisite passage:

“On the page it looked like nothing, the beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse. Bassoons and basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging there, unwavering. Until a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight…This was a music I’d never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.”

This quote refers to the third movement from the Gran Partita, but Mozart approached the second movement of this piano concerto quite similarly. It begins with a pulse, and then the violins present such a simple melody—just an arpeggio. Next, they’re joined by the winds, the oboe emerging from the texture with a descending line. Again, so simple, yet breathtaking. Then, the piano enters and plays the whole thing on its own. This ability to create arresting beauty from the simplest material is a particular gift of Mozart’s, one that he gives us in many of his adagios, and a magical example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

The third movement is a spritely jaunt that wraps up the concerto on a high note and shows off the keyboard’s brilliant technical abilities. Its form is a Rondo, which Mozart used frequently for his concerto conclusions. A Rondo features a main melody, usually called the “A theme,” that returns after each episode of new material, similar to the way pop songs return to a main chorus after every verse. This structure is perfect for finales because it allows the composer to intersperse all kinds of virtuosic flash in between segments of a familiar, and usually very hummable, melody. That’s exactly what Mozart does here, and the result is a catchy resolution full of fireworks.

Symphony No. 1 in G Minor “Winter Daydreams” (1866)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Run Time: Approx. 44 minutes

One of the great struggles of Tchaikovsky’s musical life was the conflict he felt between the Western classical tradition in which he was trained and the Eastern European folk traditions that he grew up with and felt deeply connected to. Later in his life, when he reached the height of his compositional maturity, he achieved a balance between these opposing influences, blending them into a truly unique voice that produced  some of the most beloved and well-known music in the classical repertoire. This is the Tchaikovsky we know from the great ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker, not to mention his final three symphonies. Hardly a year passes without most orchestras performing one of them.

His first symphony, however, comes from a different stage of his life. He was a newly minted professor of harmony at the brand new St. Petersburg Conservatory, and had only recently begun composing seriously. In this seminal work, you can hear him working through this conflict, exploring both voices, and working out how to bring them together.

There are many differences between the musical traditions of Eastern and Western Europe, but the most significant is the emphasis on structure versus melody. This difference is akin to a poet being focused more on the use of a specific rhyme scheme versus the meaning and sound of the particular words chosen. Western classical music is highly focused on form—both the architecture of the piece and the way that harmonies progress from one to another. Russian music, in contrast, is more concerned with melodic and dramatic expression. It tends to favor slightly different scales, asymmetrical folk-inspired meters, and often repeats melodic material with a new accompaniment, rather than developing a melody as is typical of Western tradition.

Perhaps as a nod to his Russian roots, Tchaikovsky gave his first foray into symphonic writing the subtitle “Winter Daydreams.” While not programmatic per se, the title does evoke an otherworldliness that the music echoes, like stepping into the inside of a snow globe. But even in this fantasyland, there is a hint of melancholy that so often pervades nineteenth-century Russian art.

The conflict between Tchaikovsky’s musical influences is most apparent in the symphony’s outer movements. The first movement begins with a theme in the flute and bassoon that has a distinctly folk-like feel before adding more rhythmic march-like material to his opening. Later, a triumphant theme emerges, closer to what you might expect from a typical Romantic-era symphony, which is contrasted by a minor section that feels unmistakably Russian. Here, the contrast between the two styles is quite striking, whereas in his later compositions, Tchaikovsky blends these influences more seamlessly.

The final movement opens with a distinctly Russian-flavored introduction before shifting into a more conventional Romantic-era style. The next theme, however, leans back into more Russian sounding motifs—but then Tchaikovsky develops it into a fugue, a Baroque form that represents perhaps the epitome of Western classical compositional technique. He’s clearly experimenting here, and it’s fascinating, if a little unusual. It doesn’t quite sound like the Tchaikovsky we know and love yet, but you can hear the composer he is on his way to becoming.

Upon the work’s premiere, the second movement earned particular praise with critics, and for good reason. Here, Tchaikovsky settles fully into his Russian roots, and in doing so displays his gift for melody. The plaintive tune, first introduced by the oboe, remains largely unchanged throughout the movement; it’s the accompaniment, the shifting colors, moods, and the contrasting voices around it that carry the music through an entire world of sound. This is a distinctly Eastern European approach, one that Tchaikovsky would go on to use to great effect in many of his later works.

—Notes by Valerie Sly, 2025