Imagine all the pieces of music at one point, written in inspiration from all the glorious cities in the world. New York, London, Prague, Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg...the list of amazing places in the world goes on, as does the amazing music written within each of these storied places.

This moves us to the penultimate installation of Symphonic Mozart. Mozart wrote two symphonies dedicated to a city that showed great inspiration and heart to him, the first one came in 1778, Symphony No.31 "Paris" in D Major, K.297 (300a) and the last one came eight years later in 1786 with the Symphony No.38 "Prague" in D Major, K.504

Both symphonies are considered two of Mozart's finest compositions in the genre and express a continuous lifetime of change for Mozart in the span between the two works. Both symphonies are roughly similar to each other, both contain three movements and are marked fast-slow-fast.

Paris

first movement performed by the Chapman Chamber Orchestra with Daniel Alfred Wachs

The symphony is scored for the large orchestras that were available to Mozart during his time in Paris: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in A), 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.

The first movement opens with a rising and accelerating D major scale in an effect known at the time as the Mannheim Rocket. An alternate version of the second movement exists.

"When Mozart Went to Paris" - A web page dedicated to this work featuring brief analysis and history behind the work.

Prague

second movement performed by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Manfred Honeck

The career of Mozart in Vienna, was at times stressful on the composer as his works were often the subject of great acclaim, or great criticism. While his career was in such "up and down" status in Austria, he had a consistent crowd of devotees among the Bohemians. With a great number of people consistently dedicated to Mozart's work in Prague, he took it with such grace that he composed this symphony as well as the opera, Don Giovanni to Prague.

The second movement is a typical slow movement of Mozart's symphonic compositions of that time. While being consistent in structure, harmonically the movement is unstable but uses some polyphonic interchanges to subside that. The lack of clarinet in the score sees significant effects in this movement, although a significant usage of the flute and deep strings take the movement to another level.

The Prague Symphony has already been posted about, you can read here.