Episode 7 - Dec 7, 2020

Alone in a foreign land and grieving the loss of his mother, the 22-year-old Mozart put pen to paper and produced some of the most poignant music he would ever create.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Violin Sonata in E minor, K. 304
I. Allegro (02:16)
II. Tempo di Menuetto (08:54)

Madeline Adkins | violin
Andrew Staupe | piano

recorded October 14, 2018, Libby Gardner Concert Hall, Salt Lake City, Utah
recording remastered by Michael Carnes

hosted and produced by Chris Myers (argylearts.com)

Transcript

I hope you enjoyed our Crossroads miniseries. For the next few weeks, we’re going to take a trip down memory lane and explore some performances from NOVA’s recording archives. We’ll even have a few old friends drop by as surprise guests.

Today, we’re going to hear a performance from 2018. On a concert titled Road to Night, violinist Madeline Adkins and pianist Andrew Staupe performed Mozart’s Violin Sonata in E minor, K. 304.

In 1777, the young Mozart set off on a job hunt. With his beloved mother at his side, he traveled throughout Europe, performing and hoping to get a position as a composer at one of the continent’s prestigious courts. Unfortunately, landing a job wasn’t as easy as he expected, and the trip continued for months without success.

Then, in July of 1778, while Mozart and his mom were in Paris, she fell sick. And she died. Already depressed and plagued by self-doubt, he now found himself alone and grieving in a foreign land. The 22-year-old had to write to his father with the news.

But that letter wasn’t the only thing he wrote. Mozart channeled his grief into a violin sonata— the only one he would ever write in a minor key.

This music is some of the most poignant he ever composed. Not content to wallow in sorrow, the piece walks a tightrope, balancing moments of joy with strains of deep sadness. It’s almost as though you can sense the happy memories of the mother’s love surfacing through the young son’s sorrow.

This juxtaposition becomes particularly heartbreaking in the second movement, which is written as a minuet — a dance. And I find it particularly touching to hear Mozart trying to embrace the joy of the dance through the fog of his grief. He even shifts into a major key for a short time in the middle of the movement, as though for one brief moment, a happy memory has made him forget his loss.

In the interaction between the piano and violin, you can almost picture Mozart encountering the ghost of his mother at the ball and inviting her to join him for one last dance.