Mozart composed his Bassoon Concerto in B-flat Major in 1774, when he was a mere 18, yet it remains one of the most famous and studied bassoon pieces of all time.  It was Mozart’s first concerto for wind instruments, most likely commissioned by an aristocratic amateur bassoon player.  Nearly all professional bassoonists perform this piece at some point in their career, and it is often requested that excerpts from the first two movements be played during bassoonist auditions.  It is especially prized for emphasizing the instruments’s sweet tenor voice and the clear articulation that this incredible instrument (which also has an extensive lower register) can achieve.

Andrew Schwartz, our bassoon soloist, has appeared throughout the world as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestra player.  His varied career has taken him from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, to jazz recordings with Wynton Marsalis, to special children’s concerts as principal bassoonist of the Little Orchestra Society.  He is one of the most sought after musicians in the field of historical or period instruments.  In addition to being principal bassoonist with the ACO, he is also the principal at The Handel & Hayden Society, Boston Baroque, and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra.  His video, explaining the difference between the period and modern bassppm, is currently available on the ACO website:  www.aconyc.org.

Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 in D Major—also known as the Haffner Symphony—began life as a different work than the one we know today.  Sigmund Haffner, a wealthy Salzburg merchant and burgomeister, had earlier commissioned Mozart to compose a serenade for the wedding of his daughter, with which he was well pleased.  In July of 1782, he asked his friend Leopold, Mozart’s father, if Wolfgang could compose a new symphony to be played at the ennoblement of his son, Sigmund Haffner the Younger.

Mozart replied that he was “up to my eyes in work” but promised his father he could “rely on having something from me by every post.”  He completed the work and shipped it off by early August, not only at a time when he was busy arranging an opera but was also preparing for his own wedding, which took place a few weeks later, on August 4.  Mozart was then 26 years old.

Some months later, anticipating a Vienna concert, Mozart asked his father to return the score.  After examining it, he wrote:  “My new Haffner symphony has positively amazed me, for I had forgotten every single note of it.  It must surely produce a good effect.”

“Good” did not prevent Mozart from substantially revising the work, cutting sections and repeats and adding woodwind parts.  At its first performance, on March 23, 1783, at the Vienna Burgtheater, Mozart opened the program with the symphony’s first three movements, performed several other works in between, then closed the program with the symphony’s finale—a common practice at the time.  On May 8, we will hear Symphony No. 35 all at once.  It is yet one more proof of what Richard Wagner called Mozart’s “tremendous genius.”

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 had an inauspicious beginning.  Its first private performance was in March of 1807 by Beethoven at the home of one of his patrons, Prince Franz Joseph von Labkowitz, an aristocrat of Bohemia.  It premiered publicly—again with Beethoven playing—on December 22, 1808, as part of a four-hour-long program that included premiers of his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies during a cold snap at Vienna’s unheated Theater an der Wien.  That caused one commentator to remark that the marathon program was “too much of a good thing” but another to claim that the Fourth was “the most admirable, singular, artistic and complex Beethoven concerto ever.”  The program included Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, which fell apart during the performance and had to be restarted. The entire program closed after its second performance.  The Fourth Piano Concerto then suffered neglect until nine years later when, in 1836, it was revived by Felix Mendelssohn.

Beethoven’s Fourth is almost the only classical-era concerto to begin with a piano solo. It starts delicately but breaks off after only a few bars, as though in the middle of an improvisation.  The orchestra then repeats the piano’s theme in a different key, adds to it, and keeps on going.  What follows—both in that movement and in the remaining two—is a lyrical and often robust back and forth between piano and orchestra that demonstrates Beethoven’s power of invention and fills the listener with moments of reverence, grandeur, and sheer awe at the riveting beauty of it all.

Fortepiano soloist Petra Somlai returns to us for our 40th Anniversary celebratory season.  Her prized recording of the ‘Moonlight” Sonata, made for us in 2020, resides on our website:  www.aconyc.org.  All who heard her September 2022 rendition of Beethoven’s Piano Concert No. 3 with the ACO at Alice Tully Hall still remember it. 

The American Classical Orchestra recreates the sound world of the master composers.

The ACO is devoted to preserving and performing the repertoire of 17th, 18th and 19th century composers.  By playing the music on original instruments and using historic performance technique, we attempt to recreate the sounds an audience would have experienced when the music was written and first performed.  We pass along skills and appreciation for this practice to future generations through concert performances and educational programs.

Because period instruments were made of different materials, they produce a profoundly different sound from the 20th century instruments used in modern orchestras.  Historical instruments, with their softer and more transparent tone, produce a delicacy in the gentler phrases and a pungent bite in the stronger passages.  Using period instruments, the ACO can, in the 21st century, bring audiences closer to the musical genius of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and other master composers.

The American Classical Orchestra, under the direction of founder Thomas Crawford, is New York City’s leading period instrument orchestra. Comprised of the nation’s finest period instrumentalists, the ACO plays an annual series at Lincoln Center and produces the award-winning educational program Classical Music for Kids.

Founded in 1984 as the Orchestra of the Old Fairfield Academy, the orchestra was renamed American Classical Orchestra in 2005, when Mr. Crawford established its permanent home in New York City. In the City, the Orchestra has won critical praise for its recordings, educational programs, and concerts, such as appearances on the Lincoln Center Great Performers Series and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The American Classical Orchestra is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.