Eminently unsuited to the role of musical servant, Mozart spent several unhappy years employed at the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg. The composer’s talents were tailored toward the secular theatre of opera and instrumental music, while (to put it mildly) his personality ran counter to the tact and diplomacy required to satisfy an unsympathetic patron.

A 1780 commission to write an opera for Munich allowed Mozart to leave Salzburg. Idomeneo premiered in January of 1781; in March, Mozart was summoned back by the Archbishop, temporarily in residence in Vienna for the ascension of Emperor Joseph II. Things went from bad to worse; his Munich success had given Mozart newfound confidence, and he could no longer bear the restrictions imposed by the Archbishop, who forbade him to perform publicly in Vienna lest he attract too much attention. In May Mozart requested another release, and was dismissed, as he wrote in a letter on 9 June 1781, with a kick on my arse.”

Mozart celebrated his new freedom by getting extremely busy. He began his first Viennese opera, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) and during the summer composed five sonatas and two sets of variations for violin and keyboard, including the Sonata No. 25 in F major, K.377 we shall hear today in a version for oboe and piano. These works, remarkable examples of Mozart’s maturing style, have leaner textures and more forward thrust than earlier works, plus a greater equality of the two parts, making them more nearly duo sonatas. K.377 is in three movements: a cheerful opening Allegro, a theme-and-variations Andante, and, in a bit of a throwback to earlier Italian instrumental sonatas, a Tempo di menuetto fulfilling the role of the finale.

Robert Schumann’s original aspiration (after a rather undecided adolescence) was to be a pianist. To this end he undertook lessons with one of the foremost teachers of the day, Friedrich Wieck. He also disastrously tried to make up for lost time by using a mechanical device to strengthen the fingers in his right hand. This ruined his hand; his relationship with Wieck, however, provided him with the love of his life: Wieck’s daughter Clara, Robert’s junior by a decade. Wieck strenuously combated the young lovers all the way to court. Passions won the day, and what passions they were; after their self-declared betrothal in the summer of 1837, the two exchanged 275 letters during the next 18 months. Their marriage finally took place three years later, on 12 September 1840.

Life with Robert cannot have been easy for Clara: Schumann had, to say the least, an imaginative and unstable inner life. He expressed himself through imagined multiple personalities, which eventually developed from a creative device into near-insanity. He suffered as well from extreme swings of mood, periods of fever, and a wide range of phobias. Current medical standards would probably diagnose bipolar disorder, and his ill health and eventual psychological decline were almost certainly the result of syphilis.

The couple spent several years in Dresden, a time of great productivity for Robert despite revolutionary upheavals on the political scene—he fled the city at one point to avoid being forced to join a republican brigade. He completed more than 50 works between 1849 and 1854, most of them chamber music. The Drei Romanzen, Op.94 were composed in December 1849 and presented to Clara on Christmas Day; she performed them two days later with the Dresden violinist Franz Schubert. It was typical of Schumann to indicate the possibility of performing his short character pieces on other instruments in a similar range, partly as a way of increasing the sales of his publications. But he refused the publisher’s request that separate title pages of the Drei Romanzen be printed for each possible instrument, replying that the pieces would have been very different if originally composed for violin or clarinet rather than oboe. As the title suggests, these three short pieces are heartfelt and gentle, with an undercurrent of deep emotion.

J.S. Bach’s creative powers in chamber music came to their fullest between 1717 and1723. Bach spent these years at the court in Cöthen, his only secular post, as Capellmeister to the Grand Duke of Anhalt-Cöthen and the director of his chamber music.” Since his customary steady output of church music was not required, Bach was free to turn his attention to purely instrumental music. Many of Bach’s most loved and best known works date from Cöthen, including the Brandenburg Concertos, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Inventions, the English and French Suites, the Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, and the Six Suites for Solo Cello. Add to that list the highly unusual Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903, which displays freedom of both form and tonality. Bach was the most harmonically adventurous composer of his time, but there are passages in the Chromatic Fantasia that dissolve the sense of a home key beyond anything else he wrote. An opening that seems nearly very nearly improvised gives way to a slower, grander section (Bach marked recitative” in the score to indicate its declamatory nature). A remarkable series of descending chords closes the Fantasia portion of the work before the commencement of a three-voiced, highly chromatic fugue.

Antonino Pasculli was born in Palermo, Sicily in 1842. His professional career began at the age of fourteen, when he toured Germany, Italy, and Austria as an oboe soloist. His light and effortless style was legendary, and he was often referred to as the Paganini of the oboe.” He began teaching at the Palermo Conservatory at the age of eighteen, a post which he maintained for the rest of his working life. He also directed the Palermo wind orchestra, writing many arrangements for this ensemble and introducing contemporary works by Wagner, Debussy, and Sibelius to Sicilian audiences. Many of Pasculli’s oboe compositions are fantasies on popular or operatic themes, including the work we will hear today, the Concerto on a theme from Donizetti’s ‘ La Favorita’ . The opera itself was premiered in 1840. Pasculli retired from public performance in 1884 due to failing eyesight, but lived on in Palermo until 1924.

Born in C￡diz in 1876, Manuel de Falla is the central figure of Spanish classical music of the 20th century. Though his early music was firmly rooted in conventional 19th century tonality, his mature work blends many modernist concepts with traditional Spanish forms and a strong national flavour. Despite winning a contest for Spanish opera in his late twenties, de Falla was frustrated with the musical institutions in Spain and left for Paris in 1907. There he met Stravinsky, Debussy, and Ravel, among others. Debussy was particularly supportive of de Falla and became a strong influence on his musical development.

De Falla returned to Spain an established composer, only to contend with critics who felt his music had absorbed too many foreign influences” and was obsessed with the modern French school”. Political troubles put de Falla in an awkward position; despite his general support of the egalitarian ideals of the Republican government, he was uneasy with its anti-religious stance. By the time of the Spanish Civil War, de Falla was uncomfortable with the attention paid to him by the Nationalists, and a conducting appointment in Buenos Aires became a convenient excuse to leave Spain. He remained in Argentina for the rest of his life, dying there in 1946. Ill health and depression limited de Falla’s creative work; correspondence during the War years shows him struggling with the moral value of composing music in such a troubled world. Today he is better known for his colourful compositions based on folklore and traditional themes than for his more modernist and neo-classical works of the 1920s and 30s.

The Siete Canciones Populares Espa￱olas (Seven Spanish Folksongs), one of the most significant song cycles in Spanish music and also among de Falla’s most popular compositions, were originally written for soprano and piano in 1914. The texts derive from folk sources and the musical language is firmly rooted in traditional forms.