Program Notes: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Thomas Adès

At only 19, Seattle-born pianist and composer August Baik is already making a name for himself in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. A self-taught composer, he applied for and was invited to take part in the Seattle Symphony’s Merriman-Ross Family Young Composers Workshop in 2022 and 2023. His Chuseok Overture, originally written and performed in the 2023 workshop, enraptured audiences with its elegance and energy when it was performed again during the symphony’s Celebrate Asia concert in 2024. He is currently studying at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. 

His trio, d-이-alogues, “transforms the lyrical and narrative qualities of Korean folk music into a speech-like texture,” according to Baik. His instrumentation and use of “silence, gesture and breath” reflect his experience as a Korean American: “The instruments push against their natural limitations, reaching beyond their registers in a search for articulation. The flute in the opening seems to want to jump as far out of its range as possible, the double bass fights to not just be an orchestral subwoofer, and the viola seems to want to switch roles with the double bass. This mirrors the way I navigate my cultural identity, where meaning is sometimes intuitive, sometimes elusive, yet always present.”  

Czech-Austrian composer Erwin Schulhoff lived through some of the darkest — ​and​ most explosively creative — periods of the 20th century. His Jewish family recognized his talent from a very young age, convincing the Bohemian musical icon Antonín Dvořák to test his pitch and melodic acumen — an examination Schulhoff passed spectacularly. He began his formal musical studies at the age of 10 at the Prague Conservatory, absorbing the music of Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy.  

During World War I, he was sent to the Russian front, where he was wounded and held prisoner. Once released, he returned with avant-garde, anti-militarist fervor to his composition career, embracing the influences of Dadaism, serialism and jazz as well as Slavic and East Asian music. Tragically, the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia put him at risk of arrest and execution as a Jewish Communist. He attempted to emigrate to the Soviet Union but was eventually caught and died of tuberculosis while imprisoned. Contemporary musicians have revived interest in the work of composers like Schulhoff who, despite their promise, were largely forgotten due to their suppression and persecution under the Nazi regime. 

A step back from the exuberant, convention-slashing satire of his immediate postwar output, Schulhoff’s Concertino, composed over four days in 1925, reveals the breadth of his knowledge and interests, particularly his exploration of the diversity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s many musical traditions. The first movement begins with a serene melody bearing the influence of non-Western tonality. The second develops a theme from a Czech dance called a furiant, while the third draws on the music of Carpathia, in what is now Ukraine. During the finale, the three instruments dance a cheerful rondino (short rondo), with the nimble prancing of the flute offsetting a stomping, folksy rhythm.  

London-born Thomas Adès has won accolades around the globe, with many critics hailing him as among the greatest living composers. He drew acclaim (and some raised eyebrows) with Powder Her Face, a racy 1960s-set chamber opera based on the sexual adventures of the Duchess of Argyll. Other larger works have drawn on such varied texts as Shakespeare’s The Tempest, surrealist Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel and the Biblical story of Noah.  

Debuted in 2021, Alchymia (“Alchemy”) may be smaller in scale than those orchestral and operatic works, but it bears equal witness to Adès’ eclecticism. This clarinet quintet takes inspiration from 20th-century and Elizabethan musical and literary innovations. In the tradition of program music (a term designating pieces that seek to evoke specific images or stories), Alchymia’s four movements transmute Shakespearean alchemical notions into bewitching sounds.  

The piece opens with the stately A Sea-Change, whose measured descending motifs perhaps evoke the image of a ruined ship drifting toward the seabed. It is based on an influential passage from The Tempest that describes a drowning: “Full fathom five thy father lies [...] Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange.” The second movement, The Woods So Wild, is based on an air by 16th-century composer William Byrd and continues the theme of transmutation, with bubbly ascending themes. Adès returns to the richly mournful mood of A Sea-Change with Lachrymae, based on a piece for lute by another Renaissance-era composer, John Dowland.  

After Lachrymae concludes in a powerfully dissonant chord, the final movement, Divisions on a Lute Song: Wedekind’s Round, nods to the turbulence of the 20th century, alluding to an organ-grinder’s tune from the finale of Alban Berg’s 1930s 12-tone opera Lulu. The quintet ornaments this darkly playful tune with pops of shimmering chords and jazzy chromatic slides on the clarinet. Like the rest of Alchymia, this final movement creates a magical landscape beyond the bounds of linear time by melding lute-songs from the Elizabethan era to sounds from the height of German expressionism.  

In 1790, an indebted Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart toured several German cities, including Potsdam. There, he had an audience with Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia, and succeeded in obtaining a royal commission for six string quartets. Hoping for a lucrative court position, Mozart prominently featured the cello, the king’s chosen instrument. Unfortunately, Mozart did not gain employment from his gambit; he died the following year having finished only three of the quartets.  

His String Quartet No. 22 is the second of these — Mozart’s final works in this form. Despite the composer’s straitened circumstances, the piece is bright and gentle throughout. The first movement, an allegro, adopts classic sonata form (in which two themes are explored in phases of exposition, development and recapitulation) — though, less traditionally for a string quartet, Mozart accords melodic prominence to the cello. This instrument’s unusual star turn continues through the larghetto as the cello introduces the melody, then enters into a soulful duet with the first violin. The third movement is a dynamic trio with occasional intrusions of moodiness, bookended by a courtly minuet. Finally, a witty rondo skips to a playfully understated conclusion.  

Joule Zelman © 2025