Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra (Mozart)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E major, K. 364, arrived in 1779 out of a period of restless movement. Mozart was traveling through Mannheim and Paris at the time of its composition. Scholar Simon P. Keefe has called this work "a concerto in all but name" - and that description hints at what makes it so unusual. Why does the viola part sit in a different key from the rest of the orchestra? What drew arrangers, choreographers, and novelists back to this single piece across two centuries? And what connects a 1951 festival in Perpignan, a 1988 film about drowning, and a New York ballet premiere to one orchestral score written by a 23-year-old on the road?

• 2. A Tuned-Up Viola

  ›

  The score calls for the solo viola to be written in D major while the rest of the ensemble plays in E major. Mozart directed the violist to tune the instrument a semitone sharper than normal, a technique called scordatura. The purpose was tonal: a higher tension produces a more brilliant sound, letting the viola cut through the surrounding string texture. On original instruments this approach remains more standard practice. Modern violists who choose to follow Mozart's original instruction find that the retuned instrument projects over the orchestra more readily. The divided viola section in the orchestral strings adds further layers to the work's harmony, a relatively rare scoring choice that distinguishes K. 364 from most concertos of its time.

• 3. Genre Experiments

  ›

  K. 364 was not Mozart's first attempt at writing for two soloists at once. Five years before 1779 he had composed the Concertone in C for two violins, K. 190, which tested the same basic premise. He was also working on a Sinfonia Concertante in A for violin, viola and cello, K. 320e, during the same period; that project was never finished and survives only as a fragment. K. 364 was the work that reached completion and endured, and Keefe's phrase "a concerto in all but name" points to why: the sinfonia concertante as a genre occupied a space between symphony and concerto, and Mozart pushed it decisively toward the latter's dramatic possibilities.

• 4. Recording the Piece

  ›

  Richard Wigmore, writing in Gramophone in October 2015, counted more than 40 CD recordings of K. 364 in existence. His pick for the finest on disc pairs violinist and conductor Iona Brown with viola player Lars Anders Tomter and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, released on Chandos CHAN9695. A 1989 recording featuring Brown again, this time alongside violist Nobuko Imai, also made Wigmore's short list. Reaching further back, a 1951 recording from the Casals Perpignan Festival stands apart. Isaac Stern played violin, William Primrose played viola, and Pablo Casals conducted - three figures whose individual careers were already landmarks gathered around a single Mozart score in the south of France.

• 5. Arrangements and Adaptations

  ›

  In 1808 an uncredited arrangement of K. 364 appeared in print under the title Grande Sestetto Concertante, scored for string sextet. The six parts were distributed equally across all six players, deliberately avoiding the soloist-and-accompaniment model of the original. The piece has also been arranged with cello replacing the viola part. Neither adaptation sat still: the themes Mozart wrote proved adaptable enough across different combinations of string instruments to sustain new life. William Styron wove the work into his 1979 novel Sophie's Choice, where the sound of the Sinfonia Concertante on the radio pulls the character Sophie out of depression after an assault, connecting her to childhood memories of Kraków.

• 6. Film, Ballet, and Stage

  ›

  Composer Michael Nyman drew on variations of the slow second movement for the soundtrack to Peter Greenaway's 1988 film Drowning by Numbers. In the screenplay, the original piece is also heard after each of the drownings, so the same Mozart score serves both as a source and as a recurring dramatic punctuation. On stage, George Balanchine built a choreographic realization of K. 364 danced by students from the School of American Ballet, with its premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1945. The professional premiere followed at Ballet Society at New York City Center. The ballet has since left the regular repertoire of the New York City Ballet; American Ballet Theatre is the company most recently to have performed it in New York City.