526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall

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24:12The Hindi Hindi Hindi I love you. I love you.

24:38Wow. Thank you, Nadis. That was amazing. And thank you, Mozart. So remember, Mozart was just 14 years old when he wrote that piece. Yeah, amazing. So everything is going brilliantly for young Mozart. He's got his GCSE in music. He's got loads of new commissions on the back of Mitradate. And back in Salzburg, everyone's unbelievably proud of him. The Archbishop, absolutely purring. It all looks superb. Except that there are gathering clouds hanging over. Project Mozart. Now the first of these is what Leopold really wants for his son. He wants to get him long-term security and the way he thinks he can best do that is to find his son a post as a kapelmeister which effectively is the kind of the head of music at a court and so he takes him round various courts and all the dukes and the counts and so on.

25:36I mean they're impressed, they recognize that Mozart is quality, but they keep saying, oh, he's too young, he's too young, come back in 10 years' time. So this is very disappointing for Leopold, but even more disappointing is the fact that there seems to be no interest in Mozart whatsoever from the imperial court in Vienna. And he's puzzled by this, because of course, you know, as a six-year-old, little Mozart had hugged the empress, but the awful truth is, is that the empress actually thinks they're a bit vulgar. She says, you know, they've been going around Europe like beggars. It's very, very undignified.

26:09And so she is not interested. And then the worst blow of all, the Archbishop of Salzburg, who'd been such an indulgent patron, he dies and he gets replaced by a new Archbishop who's a very different character. And he rejoices in the splendid name of Count Hieronymus Colorado. and Count Hieronymus Colorado, the new archbishop, he's had enough of the Mozarts gadding around Europe. He wants them to be what they are. He wants them to be essentially his servants. And so his goal, which he institutes the moment he has been enthroned as archbishop, is to treat Mozart not as a genius but as an employee.

26:55So, Tom, this is very like our situation, isn't it? This is how we are treated. They're in the audience tonight. Our executive producers, Tony Pasta and Jack Davenport, they treat us like employees, don't they? And we, like Mozart, feel humiliated, treated like servants. And this is exactly what happens to Mozart when he goes back to Salzburg, right? Yeah, well, I mean, I don't want to compare us to Mozart. Let's not go down that avenue. But just to say, there are social humiliations, but I think also what oppresses Mozart more than anything else is that he knows how good he is. You know, he wants to test the limits.

27:33He doesn't want to be chained up in Salzburg having to compose whatever rubbish the archbishop wants. He wants basically to do a handle, to go out there and become a freelance. And the archbishop is furious at this. He sees it, I mean not unjustifiably, as kind of rank in gratitude. And Leopold, his dad, is also worried for various reasons, I think. One, he doesn't want his son to end up kind of starving to death in a garret. He knows it's going to be very insecure being a freelance. I think also he's anxious that if his son annoys the archbishop, then this might end up badly for him. He might get dismissed from his own position.

28:13And I think also he can't bear the thought of being separated from his son. The relationship between Leopold and the young Mozart, it's the most intense relationship that either of them will have in their entire lives. And the thing that Leopold is becoming increasingly worried about, Mozart's little fellow, as he calls it. Mozart is getting interested in girls. And what Leopold is worried about is that Mozart might actually marry. So this is the real disaster that he's fretting about. But, you know, Mozart, he's 1770, he turns 21. and he decides that he's going to go out into the world and he doesn't care and when Leopold says no he goes no dad I'm off and so off he goes and Leopold can't go because he's got to stay behind with the archbishop so Mozart's much-loved mother goes with him and they head off and they go to various places across the holy roman empire not to any great effect but I think Mozart's having quite a good time and then they end up in a city on the Rhine called Mannheim and in Mannheim they stay in a house that is owned by the prompter in the local theatre, Herr Weber.

29:29And Herr Weber has not one, not two, not three, but four gorgeous daughters. And young Wolfie... LAUGHTER ..he falls madly in love with a soprano called Aloysia, and the news of this gets back to Leopold, and he absolutely blows a gasket. And he writes to Mozart and to his mother and says, what are you doing? Why are you wasting your time mooning over girls in a no-hope place like Mannheim? Go to Paris, go to London. If you want to make a go of being freelance, do it in a place where you can make enough money for it to be sustainable. And so Mozart obeys, and he goes to Paris, and it's a disaster.

30:13He hates Paris, he hates the French, he hates French music, he hates French taste, he hates everything about it. That's fair enough, Tom. I was waiting for the gusts of laughter. I'm glad they finally came. Because we are now, and you'll be ashamed of yourselves for laughing, we're plunging into tragedy because while Mozart is in Paris, his mother dies. And Mozart is prostrated by this. He adored his mother and he is crippled by grief. And eventually he leaves Paris and he crawls back to Mannheim to bury his face in the comforting chest of Aloysia. Only to find that Aloysia's only gone and married someone else.

31:03And so what's poor Wolfie to do? He has to go back to Salzburg. That must be humiliating, Tom. Very, very humiliating. And essentially he kind of knuckles down for several years, you know, he writes the kind of dreary stuff that the archbishop wants, but all the time he's kind of he's pulling at his chains and you know he still has his dreams and we've got to follow our dreams Dominic we've got to follow our dreams haven't we I mean you um as a as a young man yeah you were an academic I was you had dreams of writing enormously long books about the Wilson government I did recording podcasts about monkeys and you lived your dream yeah I have a nightmare I think some people would call it and Mozart is determined to live his dream and the crucial moment comes in 1781 when he's 25 and he's summoned to Vienna by the Archbishop of Salzburg who wants to show him off like a kind of performing monkey and this is humiliating for Mozart because he is a figure of great consequence in Vienna much admired by fellow musicians by fellow composers and he doesn't want to be at the beck and call of an archbishop and so he says no go on top of that as well as infuriating the archbishop he also infuriates leopold because when he turns up in vienna he finds that the webers have moved there and although the soprano aloysia has has has you know she's got her own man there is another weber sister available, and this is Constanza.

32:36And Mozart announces that he wants to marry her, and Leopold hits the roof. So he's infuriated both the archbishop and Leopold. He's summoned to a kind of a make-or-break conference, and it goes so badly that the archbishop's steward, according to Mozart's own account, kicks him up the arse out of the room, and that is it. That is the end of Mozart's term of employment at Salzburg, and from this point on, he will become a freelance. So he's in a bit of a mess, isn't he, Tom, because this is all very stressful for him. It is a mess, and I think Mozart's music has such a quality of lightness and often of joy that it can be easy to miss the expressions of stress and unhappiness, but they are definitely there and the piece we're going to hear now is is i i'd never heard it played live before when we walked in here this morning for the this afternoon for our rehearsal i heard the strains of it coming that from the stage and i can't wait to hear it again it's a piece that he wrote in paris in the days and weeks after the death of his mother and it is simply sublime so ladies and gentlemen this is the violin sonata in E minor, and it is going to be played by Stephanie Gonley on the violin, and Mishka Rushdie-Momung on the piano.

34:02Enjoy.

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39:00I mean, Dominic, that is a reminder that no recording can compare with the power of live music. That was amazing. Not at all. Now, as you've been listening to this episode, you might have noticed that this episode had something a little extra special, didn't it, Tom? It absolutely did. And that's because every piece of music you've heard during this podcast has been performed live by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. And if you were there, you will remember how absolutely extraordinary their performance was. We are thrilled to have them featured on this episode. And frankly, we're even more thrilled to be able to make that recording of that event open and free to everybody in the podcast who wasn't able to attend in person.

39:41The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is one of the most recorded orchestras of all time. giving more than 80 concerts a year across the world, including a stunning series in London at the historic Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields is offering an exclusive complimentary Friends membership to all listeners of The Rest Is History. You can attend open rehearsals, enjoy pre-concert talks and meet and greets with soloists, access exclusive digital downloads, and crucially, receive 25 % off tickets to their London concerts. To claim your complimentary Friends membership and explore all these incredible opportunities, just go to asmf.org forward slash history.

40:24So don't miss out. Visit asmf.org forward slash history and sign up today.

40:35So, Tom, Mozart has left Salzburg. Yeah. Does his gamble pay off? Well, obviously, it comes with costs. Leopold has repeatedly reminded Mozart of these costs. They are above all financial. So Mozart is very vulnerable to geopolitical shocks, hitting Austria and affecting the ability of aristocratic patrons to sponsor him. Another risk, of course, is that he might fall ill, because then he won't be able to write, he won't make any money. And even though he's left the Archbishop of Salzburg, there are still uncomprehending patrons. And the whole point for Mozart to go freelance really is so that he can stretch his wings, he can test the limits of music.

41:24And I think because of that, he is seen by certain patrons as being difficult, as being challenging. Right, so there's the famous moment, for those of you who've seen Amadeus, which apparently is reflected in some of the sources, that Joseph II, the emperor, sees one of Mozart's productions and says, it's great, but there are too many notes. Yes, they're probably apocryphal, but, I mean, it has the ring of truth because I think Mozart really is impatient with the kind of the musical ancien regime, if you want to put it like that. And, in fact, in 1790, so when the French Revolution is really kicking off, a fellow composer accuses Mozart of being, in musical terms, a sans-clote, not someone who wants to kind of burn down...

42:09Somebody who's wearing trousers rather than britches. Well, so that's... I mean, we'll see. Mozart is actually quite... He likes his fashion. So he might like a cloth, he might like a pair of trousers. But he is pushing at the limits. And then the other problem, of course, that he faces is a more personal and more emotional one, and that is that he has gone through a huge family bust-up. So not only is his father alienated, But his beloved sister, Nanel, who's also a brilliant musician, much loved by Mozart, she kind of ends up so cross with him that basically communication between them breaks off.

42:47And in 1782, when he marries Constanza, neither his father nor his sister is there at the wedding. And although Mozart remains in contact with Leopold, they love each other too much for the break to be total. I think that from this point onwards, the love that they undoubtedly both still feel for each other is massively, massively poisoned by a kind of sense of mutual resentment. But, Tom, let's get down to what really matters. The point of going freelance is often to make more money. Is Mozart making more money? He is making more money, yes. So he has servants. He goes from being a servant to having servants.

43:30Like you, Dominic, like me, like Keir Starmer, he loves a suit. so he's always cutting a dash he has an exquisite red coat which excites much admiration and actually when his father comes to stay with him in Vienna Mozart takes great pleasure in kind of saying look at these apartments these are costing me more than I would have earned in an entire year had I stayed in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg which is of course what his father had done But you said, you know, the most important thing to Mozart is money. I mean, it is important to him, but actually I think the most important thing to him is that he can test his sense of his own genius to the absolute limits.

44:15And so it is claimed that his reply to Joseph II's comment, you know, too many notes, my dear Mozart. Mozart replies, there are exactly as many notes as there need to be, your majesty. And if there are, you know, Joseph II in Vienna and across Europe, people who don't properly appreciate what Mozart is doing, there are lots who do. And it's not just that Mozart is writing masterpieces. These masterpieces are recognised as such. And I think it's from this that you get in the Romantic period. Mozart is not really, you know, he's not a product of the Romantic period. But going into the 1800s, the 1810s, people look back and they say, actually, you know, he was a romantic figure before romanticism.

45:04This is a man who, he defied convention in the cause of following his art. He didn't let anything stand in his way. And I suppose the great work that most famously, in the opinion of his romantic admirers, illustrated this was an opera that was premiered in Prague in October 1787, and it was written crucially four months, it was premiered four months after the death of Leopold, so Mozart's father. And this opera was called Don Giovanni. And Don Giovanni told the story of a man who cared nothing for convention, who seduced, who committed adultery, who killed people, and he never apologises. But Don Giovanni has serious daddy issues.

45:57And the daddy is a figure called the Commendatore, whom Don Giovanni had killed in the opening moments of the opera, and who he then sees a statue of, and in a foolish moment, invites to supper. And is absolutely stunned. He's sitting down to his meal when there's a great hammering on the door. And in strides, the statue of the Commendatore. And the Commendatore points at Don Giovanni, and he sings... Don Giovanni A cena take home APPLAUSE APPLAUSE

46:49Shameless. I've now sung opera on the stage of the Albert Hall. Don Giovanni still refuses to apologise. The commendatore urges him to repent. Don Giovanni won't. He reaches out, takes his hand. You going to take your hand? And then the commendatore drags Don Giovanni down to hell, and the last you hear of Don Giovanni, he goes, And that's the story. Now... You don't need to see it now. In a nutshell. You never need to see it now. So is Mozart Don Giovanni? I don't think so. I think that is a kind of romantic over-reading. And I think, actually, if you want an opera that gives you a sense of where Mozart is coming from, the sense of frustration that he feels as someone who is beholden on the sponsorship of aristocratic patrons, much better to look at the opera he wrote the previous year in 1786, and this is The Marriage of Figaro, an absolute smash hit.

47:48I think it's the oldest opera to have been permanently on the repertoire. And this is based on a very controversial French play which has been banned in Vienna because it is seen as being offensive towards the aristocracy. And The Marriage of Figaro, Figaro himself is a servant to a count, and he wants to marry the maid of the countess. The maid is called Susanna. But the count wants to claim the droit de seigneur, the right to take Susanna to bed before she marries Figaro. And Figaro is furious about this, understandably, I think. And the plot of the opera, there's loads of jumping out of windows, swapping clothes, all this kind of thing.

48:31And it ends up with the count humiliated in a garden.

48:40And this moment of humiliation is then transformed into a moment of the most exquisite reconciliation. The Countess, who has been wronged by the Count, forgives him. Susanna, who's been wronged by Figaro, forgives him. And I just want to pay tribute to my beloved uncle, who's no longer with me, who, when I was about 13 or 14, gave me a box set of cassettes of the marriage of Figaro and talked me through this moment, gave me love, not just for Mozart, but for opera, full stop. And it would be my Desert Island Disc that moment. But it's not the moment, I think, that best conveys the sense of frustration that Mozart felt with the social setup that he was involved in.

49:24Because there is a better aria that does that. And this is the last aria that Figaro the servant sings. And it's a moment where he thinks that Susanna has betrayed him. and he's so upset, he's so angry that he kind of breaks through the fourth wall and he addresses the men in the audience directly. And he says, aren't women awful? They're always betraying us. And of course, he's wrong. But those in the know, those who are familiar with the original French play would know that this aria is in the place that in the play has Figaro complaining about the aristocracy, addressing the count, saying, you think you're so wonderful, but you're not wonderful at all.

50:03The only reason that you can do what you do is because you were born into it. And so if you want to have a sense of not just Figaro, but Mozart speaking truth to power, this aria we're about to hear now, this is the one. Well, the wonderful news is that Tom will not be singing that aria. It's going to be sung by William Thomas, thank God. And the aria is called, which means, I believe, open a little bit your eyes. William.

51:23This is theắt bear cannot pass paying attention state Oh, Susanna, Susanna, Quanta pena mi costi Con quell 'ingegno a faccia, Con quegli occhi innocenti Fì creduto l 'avria, You may He will always worship your future, Look at what they are These words From the wrong thoughts Some of the tribulations But they don't have reason But they don't have reason But they don't have reason They are the stars who sing To make us a pity Sirene che cantano per farci affogare Cirette che allettano per farci le piume Cirette che brillano per togliere il ciume Sono rose spinose, sono voli vezzosi Sono orse venine, colore, maline, maestri, ganni, amiche, le fanni Che fingono mentono a morire, non sento, non sento chietà Non sento chietà, non vedo il muore The rest, the rest, I don't tell, If one knows, one knows, Open your eyes, Uomini, coyote, coyote, Look at these women, Look at what they are, What they are, what they are, They are women who sing, The rest, I don't tell, They are sirene who sing, The rest, I don't tell, Sichet to avoid offering

54:13Hmong Missh

54:25Oh

54:47APPLAUSE

54:52Tom, ladies and gentlemen, I hate to say it, but that is how a professional does it. He's got to start somewhere. So, thank you very much. That was wonderful. So, Tom, Maratio Figaro and Don Giovanni are both great successes. And, obviously, the image that we often have of Mozart is this sort of ludicrous spendthrift. But don't they show that actually he's an extremely capable entrepreneur as well as a magnificent composer? Yeah, I think it does. And I think the idea of Mozart as a spendthrift, as a kind of, you know, a genius who in Money Matters is just a child, I think that that's in large part a reflection of the impact of Leopold's letters in which he's cast as exactly that.

55:35But it is true to say that by 1789 and 1790, things are starting to go slightly downhill. And, of course, these are the years that sees the French Revolution breaks out. And Austria is very much impacted by this. Marie Antoinette, of course, is a Habsburg. And on top of that, on the eastern flank of the Habsburg Empire, a war has broken out with the Turks. So this is not good news for someone who depends, essentially, on kind of stable conditions, conditions of peace, to get commissions. but there are also more kind of domestic, more personal reasons for the downturn in Mozart's fortunes. His wife Constanza falls very seriously ill.

56:18You know, he has to spend lots of money on medicine, packing her off to spas, all the kind of stuff that happens in the German-speaking world when you fall ill. And Mozart himself then falls ill, and this is the real calamity because, of course, when he's lying in bed, he can't work, and if he can't work, he's not making any money. And he does recover, but he's really, really short of funds. And so 1790, 1791, his correspondence is full of, frankly, embarrassing, catching letters, trying to get money out of his rich friends. And then, in the summer of 1791, there comes a fateful commission, a commission to write a requiem.

57:04So the traditional version of this story, is that it's a very strange and eerie and haunting moment in his life, isn't it? Yeah, I think the kind of the eeriest, the most haunting story, perhaps, in the whole of classical music. And it derives from reminiscences from Constanza in the wake of Mozart's death, and she spoke to the man who would then go on to write the first biography of Mozart. And according to Constanza, the commission to write the Requiem, it's anonymous. It comes from an unknown messenger. Mozart starts writing it, and he falls ill, but continues working on it. And as he works on it, he becomes convinced that he is writing the Requiem for himself.

57:51And not only that, but that he is being poisoned. Now, he never finishes it, because on the 5th of December, 1791, just after midday, he dies. And he is buried in a common grave. Almost no mourners attend the ceremony. And after he is buried, there is no memorial, no headstone to mark the place where his body lay. And it's from this that you get, again, the romantic myth that Mozart died forgotten, unknown, a pauper. And it's very powerful, and this is why people believe it. However, in the main, it's not true. Sorry. We've told it, and now we're going to debunk it. We're going to have our cake, and we're going to eat it.

58:43We know exactly who commissioned the Requiem. It was an eccentric count who enjoyed employing musicians to write pieces for him, and he would then pass them off as his own. So he was essentially employing Mozart to be a ghostwriter. Mozart was not poisoned. He seems to have died of rheumatic fever. He was not forgotten. When the news spread across Vienna that Mozart had died, huge crowds gathered outside his house to mourn him. He was cherished and admired. And maybe because of that, he wasn't really a pauper either. He was still in financial trouble, but he was starting to recoup his losses. An opera that he wrote in 1791 that got put on, The Magic Flute, absolute smash, probably his most lucrative opera of the lot.

59:27So there were signs that he was kind of hauling himself back from the financial brink. And although it is true that he had a very spare funeral, that people didn't go to the ceremony, that there is no headstone, I think this reflects, more than anything, his personal piety, his sense that possibly as a reaction to the excesses of the Baroque, that an overly flamboyant funeral would be disrespectful to God. But even so, Tom, this is surely the most, tragic moment in the history of classical music, of music generally. I do find it upsetting to comprehend, you know, to ponder the death of Mozart so early.

1:00:14He dies when he's 36. You think of all the music that he could have written if he'd survived. He kept a journal, and in it he was working out things that he might do late in the future, and he would write up the date through the 1790s into the 1800s. So he was contemplating living certainly into the 19th century and of course he doesn't. And it's hard not to feel that as a terrible tragedy. But I think also the kind of impersonality of that funeral, it is upsetting. So the scene in Amadeus where he's kind of chucked into the grave and then lime is thrown over it and they just wander off and there is Mozart's body.

1:00:54I do find that kind of upsetting. And I think the reason for that is that in his lifetime, Mozart was loved, but in the wake of his death, he became even more loved, and he has remained loved to this day. And there is a kind of sorrow about his death, I think. Well, thank you, Tom. That was, dare I say, a tour de force. And now to say farewell to Mozart. there is no better piece than Mozart's great Requiem. For my money, one of the very best pieces of music ever written. So we're now going to have the introitus and the curiae, and that's going to be with the Philharmonia Chorus and the return of Nardis Williams.

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1:01:49Thank you.

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1:08:56Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. And we will be back on Thursday in 2025, our first show of 2025, with the second half of that show that we recorded at the Royal Albert Hall. And the focus of that show will be Beethoven. I hope you enjoy it. Bye-bye.

1:09:18Thank you.