Relayed from The Park Hall, Cardiff
National Orchestra of Wales
(Cerddorfa Genedlaethol Cymru)
(Leader, Louis Levitus)
Conducted by Warwick Braithwaite

Two daughters of the house of Haffner in Salzburg were privileged to have music by Mozart as part of their wedding festivities. In 1776, Mozart's twentieth year, Fraulein Elise was married to the good citizen Herr F. X. Spath, and the autograph score of this Serenade sets forth in Italian that it was composed for the wedding. It is one of the comparatively few works on which Mozart uses his title of Cavalieri, bestowed on him by the Pope when he was the merest child. The Serenade is scored for quite a small band, and was probably performed in the open air: the wedding was in the last days of July, a time of the year when, in that kindly part of the world, open-air music has a reasonable chance of being appropriate.
The Andante is a somewhat long movement elaborately worked out, whose chief melody is played at the outset in octaves by two violins. But the whole Suite is full of Mozart's inimitable grace and, as befits the happy occasion which inspired it, full of the brightest good spirits.