Sir Simon Rattle conducts Mozart in Lucerne

According to musicologist Alfred Einstein, Mozart was motivated to compose his last three symphonies not by any specific commission or immediate intention, but rather by an appeal to eternity. To this day, the image persists of a man favoured by the gods who wanted to create a symphonic monument to himself in these works. However, it is likely that Mozart wrote the symphonies specifically for three “concerts at the casino”, which he mentioned in a letter to his friend and lodge brother Michael Puchberg.

However, there is no doubt that with these works, Mozart created masterpieces of Classical symphonic music, as if he wanted to show the full range of his artistic abilities. The three pieces are fundamentally different from one another: the E flat major symphony takes us, in the Romantic words of E.T.A. Hoffmann, “into the depths of the spirit realm”. Despite its astonishing radiance and spiritedness, the music also enters the realm of the dark and demonic – “Fear envelops us; but without torment, it is more a sense of the infinite”. The popular G minor symphony, on the other hand, proves to be a prime example of perfect balance – between two dramatically charged minor movements, the andante comes across as a lyrical island. The Jupiter Symphony then displays a compositional mastery that seems like the quintessence of everything that seemed possible in instrumental music during Mozart’s lifetime.

Berliner Philharmoniker

Sir Simon Rattle