Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Flute Concerto No. 2 in D Major, KV. 314

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Born Salzburg, 27 January, 1756. Died Vienna, 5 December, 1791.
FLUTE CONCERTO NO. 2 IN D MAJOR, KV. 314
Composed in 1778 in Mannheim, using material from his Oboe Concerto in C Major, originally composed in Salzburg in 1777. The score calls for solo flute, 2 oboes, 2 horns, and strings. The work lasts approximately 16 minutes.

The stories of Mozart's genius are legend. He was playing the clavichord at the age of three, composing at five, and performing at six with his sister for the courts of Europe. He composed his first opera at the age of twelve, and was appointed concertmaster for the Archbishop of Salzburg at sixteen. Long before he reached adulthood Mozart had firmly established his reputation as one of the most brilliant virtuosos in Europe.

Despite Mozart's father's best efforts to exploit his son's virtuosity to further both their careers, Wolfgang did not make virtuosity a fundamental principle of his compositions, as did many of the Romantic composers of the next century. Such was the sensibility of the man and his classical age that the individual should remain in symbiotic balance with the society at large. To be sure, Mozart's music expressed his uncommon genius, but it did so within the constraints of common classical conventions. In the later romantic style, virtousity would become a prime directive. In Mozart's music, we hear his genius not primarily in its virtuosity per se, not in the way his music transcends the conventions of his time, but rather more subtly in the charm and elegance with which he fulfills those conventions.

Mozart's instrumental concertos preserve the same sort of classical symbiosis in the relationship of his solo instruments with the orchestra as a whole. This is not to say that his solo lines lack virtuosity. On the contrary, the flute part of his Second Flute Concerto, for example, sparkles with brilliant passages of scales and arpeggios that require great skill, but even the most dazzling passages remain in playful, balanced conversation with the orchestra at large. (Later, the romantic orchestra would often provide a more generic backdrop, allowing the soloist to scale the heights of virtuosity.)

We feel Mozart's classical symbiosis of soloist and orchestra very clearly at the beginning of his Flute Concerto in D Major. The orchestra establishes the musical themes and sets the mood, and when teh soloist enters with a sparklin scale passage, it is practically the same scale that the strings had just stated a couple measures earlier. When the solo flute steps forward in front of the orchestral sound, it takes up the scale motif handed off from the orchestra, and rather than staying in the forefront, it immediately steps back again, hodling a long, expressive note while allowing the orchestra to restate the theme of the opening, before the solo flute finally continues with its melodic line. It is a delightful partnership. Several bars later the flute catapults through a series of dazzling arpeggios, but even this display of virtuosity supports the orchestra, which at that moment is stating the main musical idea. Throughout the concerto, the flute and the orchestra play together in this way with a natural intimacy that is in itself virtuosic.