Horn Concerto No. 4 in Eb Major, K. 495
For horn with 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, and strings
Allegro moderato
Romanza: Andante
Rondo: Allegro vivace
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 was composed in 1786, and like his other three concertos, it was written for the Austrian horn player Joseph Leutgeb, for whom Haydn is also thought to have written his horn concerto decades earlier. Leutgeb had known the child Mozart and his father when he worked in Salzburg, and after moving to Vienna, he became a good friend of Wolfgang as an adult. Although the two men were friends and Leutgeb was a virtuoso soloist, their friendship was such that Mozart mercilessly poked fun at him, sometimes with personal comments written into the score. In the autograph of this concerto, Mozart has used blue, red, green and black ink to confuse the soloist.
Leutgeb was an early practioner of hand stopping on the valveless horn of the eighteenth century, a practice which allowed the performer to play more notes on the natural horn outside the natural harmonic series. That made it possible for Mozart to create the fluid melodic lines that one hears in his horn concertos, although he was well aware of and sensitive to the restrictions of the instrument. By contrast, Haydn's concerto written for Leutgeb a quarter of a century earlier, when hand stopping was not so common, is built more on the arpeggios and high passage work that require fewer stopped notes. In the last movement of this concerto, however, Mozart's arpeggios and horn calls conjure up the origins of the horn as an instrument for the hunt.
Boston Baroque Performances
Horn Concerto No. 4 in Eb Major, K. 495
February 5, 1983
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloist:
Jean Rife, natural horn