FOR HIS OWN FINGERS

Radio Record, 27 May 1938, Page 23

FOR HIS OWN FINGERS

ed MOZART WAS PIONEER OF THE CLASSICAL CONCERTO

AS a boy, Mozart began to learn his trade by arranging other people’s music in the form of concertos, and then, feeling sure of the ropes, he embarked on his own. The majority of his concertos were written between 1782, the year of his

marriage, and 1791, the year of his death. It is probably no accident that the beginning of his short-lived maturity coincides with his marriage, particularly when we remember that he embarked upon it in the faee cf parental opposition. To these 10 years belong the five

-=s notable operas, "The Seraglio," "FKigaro,’ "Don Giovanni," "Cosi Fan Tutti," and "The Magie Flute’; the great string quartets and quintets, the "Haffner" and "Jupiter" and "Prague" symphonies, the symphonies in H flat major and G minor, and the clarinet quintet. The classical concerto began with Mozart. He wrote 25, and modern pianists are only now discovering them. Among the slow movements of the concertos are to be found some of the finest imperishable gems of musical art. It must be remembered that Mozart's was an age when composers were not content merely to cover sheets of manuscript paper, but regarded it as perfectly natural to perform in public as well. The musician’s trade was comprehensive. Mozart’s concertos were practically all written for his own fingers, and hence not only contain passages of considerable difficulty, but also employ in places a kind of musical short-band-a mere skeleton of the complete thing. if one could have three wishes, as in the old fairy tales, one of them would be to call back again the actual sound of Mozart’s concertos as the eomposer played them. his wish may be, in part, gratified at 2YA on Tuesday, May 31. when Arthur Sehnabel, pianist, with the London Symphony Orchestra, under Dr. Maleolm Sargent, plays Mozart’s "Concerto in F major."