PhilPaine.com

When I first began lis­ten­ing to Mozart, the “Haffn­er” Sym­pho­ny #35 (K.385) did not make as strong an impres­sion on me as #36, #38, or #40 did. Now that I lis­ten close­ly to a per­for­mance by Neville Mar­riner, I see that I was not “get­ting it.” It’s not just a suped-up ser­e­nade, though Mozart did use a quick­ly-com­posed ser­e­nade as its basis. It def­i­nite­ly belongs with the “Linz” and the “Prague” sym­phonies as part of a group where Mozart remold­ed the sym­pho­ny from the suite-like pre­sen­ta­tion he had learned from Haydn into the tight­ly uni­fied and log­i­cal form that he was to pass on to Beethoven. The mate­r­i­al is cheer­ful, ele­gant, and dance-like, but the treat­ment is far from friv­o­lous or slight. And, on lis­ten­ing close­ly, I can see all sorts of sub­tle ways in which ele­ments in each move­ment refer to the oth­ers. The end­ing presto, with its sud­den dynam­ic shifts and odd silences, is par­tic­u­lar­ly splen­did, and com­ple­ments the open­ing alle­gro’s arrest­ing begin­ning in a most sat­is­fy­ing way.