Symphony No.38 in D major, K.504 (“Prague”)

The Symphony in D major owes its “Prague” nickname to the fact that Mozart chose to conduct its first performance on his first visit to the Bohemian capital in 1787. It it is not at all certain, however, that it was written specially for that purpose. True, it was completed just a month before he set off for Prague and, clearly, he took the score with him. On the other hand, the argument that it has no clarinet part because he didn’t know what he would find there makes no sense. He would scarcely have been invited to conduct a Prague performance of Le Nozze di Figaro if there had been no competent clarinettists in the city. Indeed, had the symphony been written for Prague, which was famous for its woodwind players, it would surely have made a special feature of a full wind band. As with the Piano Concerto in C, K.503, written at much the same time, clarinets must have been omitted for some other, specifically Viennese reason.

Another question associated with the “Prague” Symphony is why, unlike the other symphonies from Mozart’s Viennese period, does it contain no minuet? The answer must be that it doesn’t need one. After one of the greatest of all his first movements, with its haunted Adagio introduction to an inexhaustibly inventive Allegro, and one of the most extended and most dramatic of his slow movements, Mozart must have felt that a minuet would have been an anti-climax. The breathtaking Presto finale, on the other hand, which gives exhilarating and scarcely relenting chase to its first three notes, sustains the tension to the end.