"O Mozart! Immortal Mozart!": Schubert & Mozart

Programme
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No.40 in G Minor, K.550
Franz Schubert: Symphony No.5 in B Major, D.485
About
"All my life I shall remember this clear, fine, lovely day. I still hear softly, as from a distance, the magic strains of Mozart's music. [...] O Mozart, immortal Mozart, how many, how infinitely many inspiring suggestions of a finer, better life have you left in our souls!"Written by Franz Schubert in his diary on the 13th June 1816, these words not only reveal the profound admiration the nineteen-year-old composer felt for Mozart, but also how Mozart's symphonies were still the models to emulate. Just three months after this confession, Schubert began his work on his Fifth Symphony, and the comparison to Mozart's music would be more than striking. With a lighter orchestration far removed from the larger-scale symphonic writing of Beethoven (who, by this point, had already composed eight of his revolutionary symphonies), and a cheerful character most glaringly associated with the Classical style, Mozart's presence can certainly be felt in Schubert's Fifth. Of all of Mozart's symphonies, his 40th in G Minor naturally offers itself as the best companion to Schubert: the connection is especially vivid in their minuets (both in G Minor), and Schubert made a copy of Mozart's minuet to use it as a model for his symphony. But, while Schubert's symphony is said to look back to these traditions, Mozart's 40th often looks forward, with even early nineteenth-century critics even describing the work as "romantic".In Vocatio:Responsio's curtain opener, we examine this curious, retrospective relationship that has been forged between Mozart's Symphony No.40 in G Minor and Schubert's Symphony No.5 in B Major in as a meeting point for the ideals of classicism and romanticism: Mozart looks forward to a new age of musical expression, Schubert looks back to the "magical strains" of earlier music.