Mozart’s Oboe & The Hunt
‘La Chasse’ or ‘The Hunt’ was a popular theme of the 18th century. This intimate chamber music program intertwines quartets based on this fascination with music for the oboe - an instrument then often associated with hunt.
HAYDN
String Quartet ‘The Hunt’ Op. 1 No. 1 in B Flat major
MOZART
Oboe Quartet K. 370 in F major
JANITSCH
Oboe Quartet in G minor
MOZART
String Quartet ‘The Hunt’ K. 458 in B Flat major
Haydn’s string quartet ‘La Chasse’ Op. 1 No. 1 was written as early as 1751. Its stunning adagio is a vision of where Haydn would go with this genre.
Mozart’s Quartet K. 370, also nicknamed ‘The Hunt’, written some thirty years later, is the fourth quartet in a set of six he dedicated to the great master, Papa Haydn.
In 1780 Mozart visited Munich at the invitation of the Elector Karl Theodor, commissioner of his opera Idomeneo. Whilst there, Mozart reconnected with the virtuoso oboe player Friedrich Ramm and composed for him his oboe quartet taking the virtuosity of the instrument to new heights.
This program also features a beautiful and rarely heard oboe quartet by the German composer Janitsch, who spent much of his life in Berlin. His prolific output, of both chamber and larger symphonic works, is largely forgotten today.
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