Hansjörg Schellenberger – Haydn und Mozart

Description

After numerous years as resident composer and Director of Court Music at the Esterhazy castle, Joseph Haydn’s fame as a great composer of genius had spread across all of Europe – no wonder, when one considers the consistency with which he developed the form of the symphony and the string quartet in more than 100 works, from “Sturm und Drang” to the beginnings of Romanticism, not to mention his many other creations. So it is no surprise that around 1786 he was offered a very special commission from Spain: the diocese in southern Cadiz asked for a composition to be heard at the climax of Holy Week on Good Friday, the “tres horas”, which are dedicated to the memory of the death of Jesus Christ. The subject was the meditation on the “Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross”.

Without any commission or payment, purely for pleasure, W.A. Mozart composed this quartet for a “most esteemed” friend – the most wonderful work that was ever written for the oboe.
Mozart always wrote his solo works closely related to the abilities of his performers: Ramm’s playing and virtuosity on the oboe must have really inspired him. If one compares the 1781 quartet with the Oboe Concerto K.285d which was written
in Salzburg in 1777 for the oboist Ferlendis, not only do we see that this concerto is far less virtuosic, but we also hear music that is considerably less inspired and not as filled with musical richness.