Making Woodwind

Mozart composed some fifty symphonies, if we include works he adapted from opera overtures or serenades by adding movements or taking them away. The first dates from 1764-5, at the time of his childhood visit to London, and most are early works, quite short. Many are associated with his boyhood travels (his first trip to Italy in 1769-71, for instance) but his most prolific period as a symphonist was between 1771 and 1774 when, in Salzburg, he wrote no fewer than seventeen.

The Goldberg Variations stands as one of the greatest keyboard works ever written. Composed for a two-manual harpsichord, its universal musical language and distinct voicing has made it a popular subject for arrangement, including those for two pianos by Joseph Rheinberger, for woodwind quartet by Andrei Eshpai, for organ by Jean Guillou, and for solo guitar by József Eötvös, as well as the brilliantly re-imagined Gilded Goldbergs by Robin Holloway.

Here’s a collection unrivalled in its scope within the current catalogue, of orchestral works by one of the most prolific of 20th-century, Paul Hindemith, whose reputation as a purveyor of ‘useful’ music has perhaps overshadowed his colourful orchestrations and often powerfully dramatic transformations of a wide range of extra-musical inspirations. His masterpiece may be the opera he based on the life and work of the painter of the Isenheim alterpiece, Matthias Grünewald, but the Mathis der Maler symphony he derived from its music is hardly less emotive.