Andante Lacrimoso and Presto Giocoso

When my friend and colleague Omer Wellber approached me with his idea of a response to a great work, I was a little daunted to say the least. What could I add? What could I bring to an already perfect creation? In the end I knew I must let go of any inhibitions, and simply - respond. I chose the Mozart because I love it, and know it well - and I wondered if it would be interesting, and fun, to add further soloists to the original pair of violin and viola – using oboe and cor anglais (instead of second oboe) to create a similar partnership.

The brief was actually to replace the central movement, and I decided to do something extremely simple, with Mozart’s masterpiece as a starting point. I have taken the opening notes of the movement, and built them into a harmonic landscape; then developed each subsequent phrase in the same way. The music is static, and the soloists enter with ‘sighs’ – again, using Mozart’s notes, and inspired by the yearning and grief which he expresses in this beautiful movement. When the oboe and cor anglais enter with their own counterpoint, the four soloists are underpinned by gentle pizzicato and pedal notes in the orchestra. After a climax created from Mozart’s figures and patterns, the opening music returns.

This leads directly into a playful introduction to the last movement for all four soloists, drawing in more soloists, from the strings. When Mozart’s music begins, it remains much as he wrote it, but with the addition of extemporisatory additions from the solo violin and viola, who seem impatient to be centre stage, and unwilling simply to ‘play along’ with the orchestral tuttis. This ‘bad behaviour’ is soon copied by the woodwinds, and then the horns, who are liberated by the use of modern horns in F (Mozart used natural horns in Eb, brilliantly scored around their limitations). The horns begin to take full advantage of this freedom, adding their own lines and taking over the main themes. The strings also break away from their original parts, and add solo lines of their own. Any possible opportunity is seized for embellishments, and even cadenzas. Rather than returning to the orchestral tutti to finish the work, as Mozart does, I have kept the soloists in the limelight until the very end.

Commissioned by Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg and first performed by the orchestra, Konradin Seitzer (violin) and Eric Seohyun Moon (viola), conducted by Aziz Shokhakimov, on 29 & 30 March 2026 at the Elbphilharmonie.