Leader, BERTRAM Lewis
Conductor, RICHARD AUSTIN
Solo pianoforte, MOISEIWITSCH
Relayed from
The Pavilion, Bournemouth
Brahms in 1880 was made Director of Philosophy of the University of Breslau. It was necessary that he should submit a thesis in the form of a composition. As Sir Henry Hadow has said : ' A ceremonial of so solemn and academic a character naturally demanded an unusual display of learning. Symphonies were too trivial, oratorios were too slight, even an eight-part a capella chorus in octuple counterpoint was hardly adequate to the dignity of the occasion. Something must be done to mark the doctorate with all the awe and reverence due to the Philosophic Chair. So Brahms selected a handful of the more convivial student-songs and worked them into a concert overture which remains one of the most amusing pieces of pure comedy in the whole range of music '. The songs Brahms used in this overture are three known as ' The Father of his Country ', the ' Freshman's Song ', and ' Gaudeamus igitur '.
In one year, 1788, Mozart composed the three last and the three greatest symphonies he was to write before his death three years later. They were all written within less than two months, the E flat major (No. 39) being dated June 26, the G minor (No. 40), July 25, and the ' Jupiter' in C (No. 41) August 10. Each is emotionally different, yet all are unmistakably Mozart at his very finest. The E flat Symphony is happiness itself, the ' Jupiter' all dignity and grace, while of the G minor Otto Jahn, Mozart's biographer, wrote that it seems to express a sorrow rising ' in a continuous climax to a wild movement, as though seeking to stifle care*. It is as though Mozart had in this triptych deliberately written in terms of music that part of his autobiography which can alone be so expressed.