Ch’io mi scordi di te?…Non temer, amato bene K.505

If we were not aware of it from other sources, Mozart’s affection for Nancy Storace, the English singer who created the role of Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro in 1786, would be clear enough from the Scena con Rondo “Ch’io mi scordi di te.” The intimate relationship between a soprano part intended for her and a piano part written for himself – they were to give the first performance in her farewell concert before she left Vienna to return to London in 1787 – says it all. If the opening Scena, a dramatic recitative, gives little away, there are no secrets in the following Andante, in which the piano secures the most exquisite blend with the vocal line, and the Allegretto, where the scoring for both voice and piano becomes ever more passionate until it culminates in the brilliance of the closing bars.

Three weeks after he completed the Piano Concerto in C major K503 Mozart wrote a concert aria for Nancy Storace, a pupil of none other than Venanzio Rauzzini, the castrato who had inspired Exsultate, jubilate thirteen years earlier. Born in London in 1765, Storace had settled in Vienna in 1783 and created the role of Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro tin 1786. That she occupied a special place in Mozart’s affections is clear enough from Ch’io mi scordi di te and its intimate relationship between a vocal line intended for her and a piano obbligato part written for himself. Its first performance, at the soprano’s (highly profitable) farewell concert before leaving Vienna to return to London in February 1887, must have been a memorable occasion.

The text, which Mozart had used before in an aria for tenor with violin obbligato for a concert performance of Idomeneo a few months earlier, is set in this case as a “Scena con Rondo.” The Scena, a dramatic recitative, is scored for soprano and strings alone. The piano makes its first entry at the beginning of the Rondo to introduce the tenderly expressive main theme. As the soprano takes up the melody, the keyboard obbligato runs delicate rings round it and secures the most exquisite blend with it at the point where it sprinkles high arpeggios over a slow chromatic descent in the vocal line. On a change of tempo from Andante to Allegretto the piano introduces a second rondo theme and, as before, the voice takes it up and develops it while the piano weaves an embroidery round it. This time, however, the scoring for both voice and piano becomes ever more passionate until it culminates in the brilliance of the closing bars.