Overture: Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn

The overture to Peter Schmoll is a good example of the care Weber took with these works. Based on a sprawling novel, Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn (“Peter Schmoll and his Neighbours”) about a group of friends dispersed by the French Revolution, the libretto would have been an impossible task for any composer let alone the fifteen-year-old boy who applied himself to it in Salzburg 1802. The opera was staged there in the following year but, in spite of the declaration by Weber’s teacher, Michael Haydn, that it was composed “with much fire and delicacy and appropriately to the text,” it was not a success.

Although Weber took no further interest in the rest of the score, the overture he thought worth saving and, after carrying out a thorough revision in 1807, he had it published under the title Grande ouverture à plusieurs instruments. Concert work though it is now is, however, its operatic origins are still quite clear - not so much in the Andante moderato introduction or the cheerful first subject of the Allegro vivace, perhaps, but certainly in the characteristically lyrical second subject and, above all, in the expressive Adagio intervention on woodwind just before the recapitulation.