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Leopold Mozart · Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart · Franz Xaver Mozart
Konrad Jarnot, baritone
Alexander Schmalcz, piano

Just in time for the 55th German Mozart Festival Augsburg, Konrad Jarnot and his piano accompanist Alexander Schmalcz present an exceptional Mozart program with songs of three generations of Mozarts: Leopold, Wolfgang Amadeus and Franz Xaver Mozart (son of Wolfgang Amadeus and Constanze). This CD is only the second recording of Franz Xaver Mozart’s songs ever released; it is the premiere of these songs for baritone.
Konrad Jarnot is one of the most renowned concert and opera singers of the most recent generation of singers. He regularly appears with major orchestras, conductors and Lied accompanists. He is especially devoted to Lied recital, which takes him to the most important national and international music festivals and concert halls. He studied voice with Professor Rudolf Piernay at the London Guildhall School of Music and Drama, as well as with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Alexander Schmalcz Klavier

Alexander Schmalcz took his first piano lessons as a member of the Dresden Kreuzchor. He began studying music in 1990 at the Academy of Music in Dresden, subsequently transferring to the Utrecht Conservatory. In 1993, he became a student of Graham Johnson at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. The young pianist won the Gerald Moore Award in 1996 and the Megan Foster Accompanist Prize. He won the Nederlands Impresariaat competition in 1995 with his piano trio.

He has accompanied international singers such as Matthias Goerne, Grace Bumbry, Konrad Jarnot, Stephan Genz, Stephan Loges, Marcus Ullmann, Eva Mei, Doris Soffel and Peter Schreier, accompanied him on his farewell tour, as well as the Petersen Quartet.

Alexander Schmalcz has performed in the major music centers of Europe, the Americas and Japan as well as at international music festivals, including Wigmore Hall London, Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, the Salzburg Festival, Schwetzingen Festival, Prague Spring, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Cologne Philharmonic, Royal Opera House Covent Garden London, La Monnaie Bruxelles, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Musikverein, Tanglewood Festival, Liederhalle Stuttgart, Kennedy Center Washington D.C., Frauenkirche Dresden, Elmau Music Festival, Rotterdam Festival and Schubertiade Vilabertran.

He has taught at the Robert Schumann Academy of Music in Dusseldorf since 1999 as well as at worldwide master classes, e.g. in London’s Wigmore Hall. The artist was invited by the Konzertgesellschaft München to participate in the jury of the 2004 “German Romantic Lied” competition in Munich.

A Mozart Triad

Welcome to an imaginary get-together of the Mozart family. A stately dinner table, the likes of which Wolfgang Amadé so loved to take his place at, is not yet set – but in its stead we have prepared a “musician’s table” without equal. Ready to greet you are three generations of thoroughly different artists, whose lives, however, have one thing in common: a certain tragedy. Neither grandfather Leopold (1719–1787) nor son Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus (1756–1791) – the complete baptismal name of the executive chairman in composers’ heaven – ever attained the desired post of court kapellmeister.

Born in Augsburg, Leopold was an extensively educated “homme de lettres”, famous throughout Europe as a theoretician and pedagogue – not only due to his violin treatise. In 20 years, however, he only managed to rise in the ranks of the Salzburg Prince-Archbishop’s service from violinist to vice-kapellmeister. If Leopold Mozart tended to create his own enemies through his general mistrust (“people are all villains”, he wrote in a letter dated October 20, 1777), some contemporary reactions to the grown-up ‘wunderkind’ Wolfgang Amadeus still remain inexplicable. We cannot know, though, whether the reason behind these was a latent fear of so much ability – or simply pathetic ignorance…

The major break in Mozart’s life, i.e. when he ceased being the celebrated idol of the European nobility and began to seek his way as a freelance, if well-paid composer of commissioned works, can be seen in a letter from December 12, 1771 by Empress Maria Theresia to her Milan-based son, Archduke Ferdinand, Generalgouverneur of Lombardy, who had been considering taking the 15-year-old musical genius under his wing: “You ask me whether you should take the young Salzburger into your service. I wouldn’t know why, because you don’t really need to employ a composer or similar useless folk. I’m just telling you that you shouldn’t overload yourself with unnecessary people. In addition, he has a large family.”

The case of grandson Franz Xaver Mozart (1791–1844) is different, even though his career also turned out to have tragic overtones. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (his father) and Constanze (née Weber) had six children, of whom only the second, Carl Thomas, and the sixth, Franz Xaver Wolfgang, survived. In contrast to his brother, who became a government official, Constanze intended her youngest son to be a musician. She changed his name to “Wolfgang Amadeus”; his family nickname was “Wowi”. As his contemporaries correctly pointed out and almost all entries in his guest book show – not to mention the numerous critics of his concerts and particularly the poem written by Franz Grillparzer after his death (“Your father’s name it was, / that interfered with your vigor in the bud”) – , it was the name inherited from his father and the far too demanding expectations on his abilities that were the most disastrous obstacle for Franz Xaver Wolfgang’s artistic blossoming. In comparison with his father, he was an artistic failure.

From 1813 onwards, Franz Xaver Mozart was a frequent visitor in the house of Governor von Baroni-Cavalcabò in Lemburg, where Mozart had resided as of 1807. After returning from his major three-year concert tour of Europe (which began in 1819), he gave the Governor’s daughter Julie (1813–1887) piano and composition lessons. Although Mozart – as he made himself abundantly clear – was highly prejudiced against women composers, he actively propagated his student’s compositions. Robert Schumann, who met Julie in 1835, and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy were also taken with her works as well. The present CD thus includes a song by Julie Baroni-Cavalcabò in order to give the ‘triad of Mozarts’ a touch of feminine magic. The composer embodies the loss of love and happiness portrayed in Ludwig Bechstein’s poem Warum? with expressive appoggiaturas in the voice and piano as well as rich harmonies; the piano frames the work with several melancholy measures.

Comparing the three Mozarts with each other is only possible in the genre of symphony or Lied, as we have done here. That Leopold Mozart is frequently underestimated as a composer probably rests on several circumstances: for one, much of his music, including almost all of his oratorios and stage works, has been lost, and for another, the supreme talent of his son seems to have impressed him to such a degree that he not only sacrificed his career for him, but almost completely stopped composing after around 1765.

The two songs Geheime Liebe and Die großmüthige Gelassenheit are an exception. Early copies of these songs are dated 1772 – the latest date known in connection with any of Leopold Mozart‘s works. Originally, Lieder were not meant for the concert hall, but only performed at home with and for friends or acquaintances. This is why the subjects of such pieces are often so banal: besides spiritual texts meant to edify the listener’s moral character, they often exalt lighthearted subjects such as conviviality and friendship, dance or other pleasures of life (as in Geheime Liebe), or are poetic renditions that provide suggestions for a happy, balanced life. Sorrowful love, as addressed in Bei dem Abschied, was not yet considered to be of any importance.

The three earliest songs of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, written after 1768, follow the models of most of his father’s songs. This similarity, which has less to do with Leopold’s example than general norms of the age regarding Lieder, has led to the fact that some of father Mozart’s songs – including Die Zufriedenheit im niedrigen Stande – have been considered to be early compositions of his son. In the late 1770s, opera began having more influence on Wolfgang’s Lied composition. This is shown by the two French compositions Oiseaux, si tous les ans and Dans un bois solitaire from 1777/78 with their operatic vocal lines as well as the canzonetta Ridente la calma from 1773/74. In the 1780s, Mozart dedicated himself to Lied composition and created – in addition to a number of simple, often strophic works – several works in this genre that were entirely unusual for the times: Das Veilchen from 1785, a composition based on a text by Goethe that much more resembles a miniature opera scene than a Lied, and the lyrical, atmospheric works Abendempfindung and An Chloé, both from 1787, Wolfgang’s most productive year for this genre.

Franz Xaver Mozart’s relatively great interest in composing Lieder may have to do with the fact that he was relatively unaffected by the pressure to follow in his father’s footsteps in this area. The first six songs we have from him, published in 1810, reflect a textual and compositional phase of transition. Four of the poems are concerned with love or unrequited love, but from a rather buoyant or distant angle. Three are strophic; the others are through-composed. The vocal line vacillates between popularity and individuality; the piano accompaniment often follows the voice but occasionally frees itself to present extended preludes, interludes or postludes. With its premonition of death, minor key and importance of the piano – which fills in almost all the rests that occur after rhyming words – , Die Klage an den Mond is possibly the most deeply felt Lied from this time. It is suspected that in his last years, Franz Xaver stopped composing due to the resignation that he could never live up to the example of his legendary father. The text of the song Erinnerung, written by Lord Byron, thus sounds almost like a personal confession.