Mozart Melodies

Music by three of the great Viennese Classical composers will launch the 2016-2017 season. Following a dramatic opening with Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, the October concert continues with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, “Turkish.” One of Mozart’s most popular pieces, the concerto will be performed by Alexandra Switala in her first appearance with the Evanston Symphony. Switala made her professional debut with the Fort Worth Symphony at age 13, and the rising star has since performed with orchestras such as the New World Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. She has been a featured artist on nationally syndicated media including the PBS television show From the Top at Carnegie Hall, the NPR radio show Performance Today and on Chicago WFMT’s Introductions.

The five violin concertos composed in Salzburg in the mid-1770s remain the centerpiece of Mozart’s many works for the instrument and may have been intended for performance by the composer himself. The “Turkish” is the last of these five early works, its first two movements markedly brimming with melody, and its rousing finale featuring the surprise introduction of Turkish music. This interruption to the more orderly rondo that surrounds it is what gave the movement its nickname. Mozart had not actually visited Turkey himself, so he was forced to imitate the march-like “alla Turca” style that was immensely popular during the era, and also borrow from himself; the theme had already been used in his 1772 ballet, Jealousy in the Harem.