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April 13, 2025
The applying of nicknames to pieces of music has a long, if not always entirely uncontroversial history.
Clearly, if a composer gives a work a title or subtitle, there can be no debate — for example, Vaughan Williams' A London Symphony was only dubbed Symphony No.2 after the fact (Vaughan Williams did not begin to number his symphonies until his fourth); Beethoven subtitled his third symphony "Eroica" (although, in a note to his publisher, he said that the symphony's real title was "Bonaparte") and his sixth "Pastoral".
But most musical nicknames were bestowed not by the composer and not contemporaneously. And not always logically: both Beethoven's Op.101 and Op.106 sonatas were published as "für das Hammerklavier", although the name only stuck to the latter.
Nor is there necessarily any perceptible logic to the acceptance of nicknames by the public or by musicians.
Which brings us to Mozart's "Elvira Madigan" concerto, a nickname which has frequently been applied to the concerto since its slow movement's all-but-ubiquitous presence in Bo Widerberg's 1967 movie of that name.
Now it is certainly true that the nickname did not appear until the music was the best part of two centuries old and, in some senses, is totally inappropriate.
But — and you knew there was a "but" coming — it is useful to distinguish the work from several of its companions: referring to Mozart's C major piano concerto fails to separate it from his three other concertos in the same key. Calling it "number 21" means counting not only his concertos for two and three pianos in the sequence, but also the four early concertos he wrote based on the work of other composers, none of whom are exactly household names (e.g. Eckard, Schobert, Raupach and Honauer). And referring to it as "K.467" possibly says more about oneself than the music.
So, while readily admitting that Mozart's concerto is no more "about" a doomed romance between a nineteenth century Swedish aristocrat and a Danish tightrope walker than Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata is about a boat crossing Lake Lucerne by the light of the moon, I will also happily use either name for convenience.
And, on a more personal note, I suspect that nobody who saw Widerberg's film — which has often been cited as one of the most purely beautiful ever made, resembling a series of Renoir paintings come to life — on its first run, in the company of their first serious girlfriend, can ever quite divorce that heady feeling from the slow movement of Mozart's concerto; even more than half a century later.
It was with a perfectly splendid account of the concerto that Angela Hewitt and the Victoria Symphony closed Sunday afternoon's (nearly) all-Mozart programme.
The opening tutti was confident and lithe, with a wonderfully feline grace. Hewitt's pianism was completely at the service of the music, both tonally and stylistically, and communications between her and the orchestra were excellent — as witness the immaculate pickup after the first movement's cadenza.
In the Andante, the movement which was used so extensively in the film, I am delighted to report that Hewitt, unlike a number of contemporary pianists, resisted the temptation to decorate Mozart's melodic line: for me, the attraction of this movement (teenage romance aside) has always been the almost ascetic beauty of the theme; the argument has always been that Mozart himself would surely have improvised decoration, but I remain unconvinced and believe that he would have realised that anything more than subtle decoration would have been painting the lily.
This movement is always over too soon, but especially on this occasion: if I had a single complaint (and that is perhaps too strong a word) it would be that Hewitt's tempo erred a little on the quick side. It is undoubtedly true that the music is marked andante and too often seems as if the soloist has mistaken that for adagio, leading to a wide variance of timings in performance — the shortest recording I have takes just six minutes and nine seconds, the longest eight minutes and twenty four, a difference of some thirty-seven per cent — and although I was not staring at my watch (in truth, I don't wear one) I could not help but think "Oh no, it's over already!" as the final bars hove into view.
I would not, though, make too much of this; it did not spoil an absolutely enchanting performance.
The finale was brisk and buoyant, featuring some marvellously perky winds, in fact the Victoria Symphony played superbly all afternoon, it was salutary reminder of just how good they are these days. The music's close was greeted with a rapturous, and well-deserved, ovation.
"Ah, Cramer. We will never be able to do anything like that."
The words are those of Ludwig van Beethoven, speaking to his friend, the composer and pianist Johann Baptist Cramer, on the occasion of their attending a performance of Mozart's C minor concerto.
By way of complete contrast, with the "Elvira Madigan", there is absolutely no problem in establishing which work is meant by Mozart's C minor concerto; for of all of Mozart's thirty-some concertos, only two are in minor keys, and both of those are for the piano: the D minor (No.20 in the usual numbering) K.466 and the work which closed the first half of Sunday's programme, No.24 in C minor, K.491.
Moreover, if ever there was a work to rebuff Antonin Antonín Dvořák's remark that "Mozart is sunshine", it is surely this concerto and its companion. As Longfellow wrote, "into each life some rain must fall", although, in the case of K.491, it is more like a torrential downpour.
The concerto's opening (a theme which surely influenced Beethoven's own C minor concerto) was powerful, yet not too forceful. Hewitt's first entry was poised and cast in beautiful tone colours; the movement's inner turmoil was exquisitely portrayed.
The serene slow movement brought a temporary sense of tranquility, with the winds — this is the only concerto in which Mozart employed both oboes and clarinets — particularly impressive.
The finale was bold and dramatic, underlining what Alfred Einstein called the "dark, tragic and passionate" nature of the music; even in the coda, which shifts to a dancing, triple time there is no light, no optimism. To quote Einstein once again: "it is hard to imagine the expression on the faces of the Viennese public" at the first performance.
Gerald Finzi may have lived two decades longer than Mozart, but his death, in 1956 at the age of fifty-five from Hodgkins Lymphona, was still a tragedy and it is only in recent years that there seems to have been something of a revaluation of his music, particularly his instrumental works — he was always better known as a writer for the voice.
Eclogue was composed as the slow movement of a piano concerto in the late 1920s. Finzi somehow never managed to complete the remainder (Vaughan Williams apparently disliked the first movement) and, although he clearly thought it worth the effort of the two revisions he made, the music remained unpublished and unperformed until after his death.
Unpublished, unperformed and untitled: the name by which it is now known was given to it by the three people who edited the score for publication, but as two of them were his widow, Joy, and his son, Christopher who was also a musician, I think we can be fairly confident that Finzi would not have disapproved. It refers to a poem in the classical style of a pastoral nature, often in the form of a dialogue between shepherds.
Here, the dialogue is between the piano and the string orchestra. The music begins with a lengthy piano introduction, for which Hewitt employed lusher tones than would have been appropriate for Mozart, before the strings join in with luminous textures.
The work is not very long, but it is quintessentially English while still retaining Finzi's distinctively individual style and provided a lovely twentieth century interlude between the two Mozart concertos.
Unfortunately, at the work's magical close one gentleman (admittedly not the word which immediately springs to mind) felt the necessity of informing us all of his approval with a distinctly audible "yeah!" before the final notes had time to die away. (He also felt obliged to repeat this after the first movement of the "Elvira Madigan" concerto but fortunately — I had been bracing myself — restrained himself after the andante.)
More Mozart opened the afternoon in the shape of the Concert-Rondo in D, K.382.
This was the perfect amuse-bouche, with its crisp, lively and well-contoured opening, sparkling pianism from Hewitt and a buoyant triple-time episode.
The Royal was, as it should have been, sold out and, even from my vertiginous position in the nosebleed section of the balcony, I am confident that I enjoyed the music as much as any other audience member.
Angela Hewitt is a national treasure, at a time when we are sorely in need of them. And the Victoria Symphony continue to go from strength to strength.
A wonderful afternoon.
One final note: the afternoon opened with Terence Tam leading the orchestra in a spirited rendition of "O Canada" lustily sung by a choir of however many the Royal can hold (although some seem not yet to have cottoned on to the change to "in all of us command").
This upsurge of feeling was quite electrifying; the only time I have heard the anthem sung with such fervour before was also at a Victoria Symphony concert in the Royal Theatre: on the night of the 1995 Quebec Referendum.
Elbows up!
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