3 movements from Serenade in D K.320 (“Posthorn”)

Mozart produced serenades at every major stage in his career - from the earliest of those he supplied for a variety of social occasions in Salzburg to the great wind scores of his maturity and the string quintet Eine kleine Nachtmusik written four years before his death. Most of the Salzburg serenades were commissioned by students at the University to celebrate the end of the academic year and were intended to be performed out of doors.

The most interesting aspect of the Serenade in D K.320, written as university “Finalmusik” in 1779, is surely not so much the use of a posthorn in the second Minuet (omitted on this occasion) as the ambitious construction of the first movement. Many serenades begin with a slow introduction but few of them aspire to the symphonic distinction of recalling the opening bars as a dramatic event in the Allegro that follows. Another distinctive feature is the serious-minded Andantino in D minor. Whatever the Salzburg students thought of that exposure to pathos, they must surely have appreciated the brisk finale with its particularly brilliant development section, its playful oboes, and its brief but exhilarating jaunts into fugal counterpoint.