Symphony No.25 in G minor, K.183

Mozart’s most celebrated work in G minor – perhaps the most famous of all works in that key – is the Symphony No.40, written in Vienna three years before his death. There is, however, another Mozart Symphony in G minor which, though written in Salzburg when he was only seventeen, has many of the same qualities. What inspired him to write such an uncompromising minor-key symphony at that time, amid a group of more relaxed symphonies in major keys, it is impossible to say. Perhaps he had heard examples of the then fashionable “storm and stress” symphony, like Haydn’s No.39 in G minor, on a recent visit to Vienna.

Symphony No.25 doesn’t so much echo Haydn or any other composer, however, as anticipate Mozart’s own Symphony No.40. There is a restless quality about the first movement, much of it deriving from the rhythmic energy of the main theme, and the urgency is intensified later when material originally introduced in the major unhappily reappears in the minor. If the slow movement seems a little gloomy, with its sighing phrases on muted strings echoed by melancholy bassoons, it brightens up with a radiant episode for violins which is encouragingly repeated at the end.

Of the four movements, the Minuetto is the one which most clearly anticipates its equivalent in the great G minor Symphony, both in its fairly stern outer sections and its lyrical use of wind instruments in the middle. Taken at a brisk pace, the closing Allegro is similar in effect to the hard-pressed finale of the later work and defies the convention of the day by avoiding a happy ending.

An uncompromising minor-key symphony was a most unlikely thing for a well brought up young musician like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to produce in 1773. What stimulated him to write such a disturbing work - at about the same time as the more conventional but no less interesting symphonies in C major, K.200, and A major, K.201 - must have been the experience of hearing the latest in the then fashionable Sturm und Drang symphonies on a recent visit from Salzburg to Vienna. Perhaps Haydn’s Symphony No.39 in G minor (1768) was one of them.

But the most striking quality of K.183 is not so much the Haydn influence as the distinctive atmosphere of Mozart in G minor in clear anticipation of the great Symphony No.40, K.550, in the same key. There is a restless quality about the first movement, much of it deriving from the rhythmic syncopations of the main theme, and the urgency is intensified in the recapitulation, where material originally introduced in the major unhappily reappears in the minor.

In all three of the 1773-74 symphonies the coda is made into a special feature of nearly every movement except the minuets. But in the Andante of K.183 Mozart has a different idea for an effective ending. Just after the E-flat major first subject of sober three-note phrases on violins, darkly shadowed by bassoons, there is a bright little episode in B flat major which, after the repeat, is not heard again until its quite unexpected but curiously satisfying reappearance in the tonic at the end of the movement.

The Minuetto is the movement which, of the four, most clearly anticipates its equivalent in the great G minor Symphony. But if the last movement is taken at a fairly brisk two-in-a-bar, as it often is, the effect is similar to that of the hard-pressed finale of K.550. Like the later finale, and in precocious defiance of the conventions, it recapitulates its B flat major second subject in G minor and avoids the happy ending.