Wednesday 27 August 2008

154. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1787)


















Recording

Title: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
Performers: Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Director: Neville Marriner
Year: 1987
Length: 17 minutes

Review

Few pieces of music are as famous as the four movements in what is probably Mozart's most famous Serenade and piece in general. That is at the same time the great thing about it, the way it is instantly recognisable and you can sing along to all of it, but also its major problem.

This is so popular that it is hard to come to it with fresh ears, it has long ago reached the state of banal music, too much success for its own good, by far. But if you try you can get good things from it.

It is not only fun, but the capacity of Mozart to make such endurable music over 200 years ago that every 5 year old can sing today is quite astonishing. Mozart is a master of immediately attractive music when he wants to leave complexities aside and this is a perfect example of that. Populist music at its best.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Mozart listed this work as having five movements in his own catalogue of his works. ("Allegro - Minuet and Trio. - Romance, Minuet and Trio and Finale.") The second movement in his listing, a minuet and trio, was long thought lost and no one knows if it was Mozart or someone else who removed it. Musicologist Alfred Einstein has suggested, however, that a minuet in Piano Sonata in B-flat, K.498a, is the missing movement. The sonata's minuet has been recorded in an arrangement for string quartet,although music scholars are not certain that Einstein is correct.

First Movement:

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