Mozart 250: 1775
The Mozartists, Ian Page, Rachel Podger
Wigmore Hall. 18 June 2025

Photo: The Mozartists

Haydn: Symphony No. 66 in B flat
Mozart: Violin Concerto No.2 in D major, K.211
Symphony in D major, K.196+K. 121/207a
Violin Concerto No.5 in A major, K.219

The Mozartists‘ enterprising MOZART 250 project has reached its 10th anniversary, with concerts this season focusing on the year 1775, when Mozart was about 19. The project started in 2015 on the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s childhood visit to London and will follow Mozart’s musical life and that of his contemporaries year by year until the 250th anniversary of his death in 2041. It has been described as a “journey of a lifetime”, but it will probably outlive many members of the current concert audience. Given the noise the audience made during tuning up, I am not sure if they deserve to see the project through to the end. Perhaps surprisingly, given their status in the repertoire, Mozart completed all of his violin concertos by the time he was 19. This concert included two of them, with two more coming in November. The soloist, making her debut with The Mozartists, was the distinguished violinist Rachel Podger.

The Mozarts include other composers in their reflections on Mozart’s life with compositions from the same year. Hadyn is the most obvious companion composer, although in 1775 he was in his early 40s and close to the peak of his musical activities at the Esterházy court. Contrasting any composer with Mozart is problematic – past concerts in the MOZART 250 project have shown that the young Mozart can musically outshine some of the greatest, and much older, composers of his time. Haydn’s Symphony No. 66 in B flat opens in rumbustious style, the rather four-square ‘rumpty-tump’ style contrasting with more lyrical passages in a rather late example of his Sturm und Drang style. A master of contrasting moods, Haydn plays with emotions with his frequent changes in texture, notably in the elegant second movement Adagio and the characteristically jovial Menuetto e Trio and a tongue-in-cheek Finale, marked Scherzando (joking/playful).

Rachel Podger has the sort of stage presence that wins an audience over at her first appearance. Her convivial and engaging style continues into her playing, which encourages her fellow musicians and the audience to join her in her evident enjoyment of the music. Her very physical style is not one that is easy to copy unless you have her natural and relaxed confidence. Mozart’s second violin concerto was composed two years after his first, written when he was 17. It is a good-natured and rather genial composition, relishing the interplay between the soloist and the orchestra. The central Andante has a tinge of deeper emotion, while the jolly concluding Rondeau, with its teasing up-and-down scale passages, gave Podger ample chance to play around with the links back to the rondo theme.

The second half opened with the curious Symphony in D major, K.196+K.121/207a, its complicated Köchel number giving a clue as to its background. The first two movements were from the Overture to La finta giadiniera, first performed in January 1775 after a couple of delays. Mozart eventually replaced the third movement, which had segued into the first vocal number, with an energetic short Allegro.

Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.5 was composed just a few months after Concerto No.2, but what a difference those few months make! It has a far more assured sense of musical structure, but retains the experimental aspects of youthful ideology. It opens with sotto voce tremblings and broken chords on the strings, twice interrupted by loud bursts of rudeness from the rest of the orchestra. The violin soloist enters as if they were playing the wrong concerto, such is the contrast between what was expected and what the introduction suggested – the first of several further surprises that follow. The sensuous Adagio is full of dying falls, in sharp contrast to the final Rondeau. It gave the concerto the nickname of “Turkish” because of a brief burst of Turkishness in the middle of the minuet-structured rondo, the first of Mozart’s ventures into what became the popular alla turca genre.

One of many delights in this concert was the many opportunities for cadenzas from Rachel Podger. As well as the standard end-of-movement examples in the Haydn, each of the rondo returns was enlivened with further cadenza passages, several of which raised a smile from the other musicians on stage, suggesting that they were improvised.

As ever, conductor Ian Page demonstrated his devotion and skill to music’s classical era, with his impressive dedication to phrasing and detail. And, of course, Rachel Podger was a star turn, with an obviously enthusiastic following from the Wigmore Hall audience. It is a shame that Mozart only wrote five violin concertos.