MASTERS IN VIENNESE

There were three of them. We attach a label to them: Viennese classics. Papa Haydn in an impeccable wig, a perpetually smiling but prematurely deceased Mozart and a deaf Beethoven with a worried face and disheveled hair. Often seen in stereotypical ways, the Viennese classics actually revolutionized the music of the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Joseph Haydn's list of merits is extremely long — in addition to magnificent symphonies, string quartets and oratorios, it also includes instrumental concerts. Haydn, open to experimentation and exploration, composed a piece for Anton Weidinger — a virtuoso but also a trumpet builder. The Austrian trumpeter created a new version of the trumpet — with flaps, which greatly expanded the possibilities of the instrument, and Haydn skillfully used this to write a spectacular and energetic Concerto in E flat major, which to this day remains one of the most important positions in the trumpet repertoire. Symphony in F major was written when the composer was... 11 years old! The premiere took place at a concert attended by the Mozart family: father Leopold, Wolfgang Amadeus and his older sister Nannerl, and the delighted audience appreciated the young genius. Written more than 30 years later, Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36, is already a completely different musical world. A great, brilliantly working symphonic machine set in motion by a visionary and a brilliant composer. A four-part symphony is like a closed, self-contained world that will pull us into its center if we just let it.

photo: Katarzyna Wojtowicz