Sally Beamish's Andante Lacrimoso and Presto Giocoso (after Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante K364) premieres on Sunday and Monday March 29 and 30 with the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg conducted by Aziz Shokhakimov.
Commissioned by Omer Meir Wellber in his first season as Music Director of the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, Sally Beamish’s exploration of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante K364 playfully replaces the second and third movements.
I wondered if it would be interesting, and fun, to add further soloists to the original pair of violin and viola – using oboe and cor anglais (instead of second oboe) to create a similar partnership. The brief was actually to replace the central movement, and I decided to do something extremely simple, with Mozart’s masterpiece as a starting point. I have taken the opening notes of the movement and built them into a harmonic landscape, then developed each subsequent phrase in the same way. The music is static and the soloists enter with ‘sighs’ – again using Mozart’s notes – inspired by the yearning and grief which he expresses in this beautiful movement. When the oboe and cor anglais enter with their own counterpoint, the four soloists are underpinned by gentle pizzicato and pedal notes in the orchestra. After a climax created from Mozart’s figures and patterns, the opening music returns.This leads directly into a playful introduction to the last movement for all four soloists, drawing in more soloists from the strings.
- Sally Beamish
