Symphony No. 38 in D Major

Composed in the wake of Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart’s Symphony No. 38 is a confident and ambitious work. Though bustling with the wit and energy of comic opera, it also anticipates the more serious world of Mozart’s next opera, Don Giovanni. Mozart composed the symphony at the end of 1786 for a concert in Prague in January 1787, and judging by the number of surviving sketches, he expended considerable effort on it. The “Prague” Symphony, as it became known, begins with a powerful slow introduction (“Adagio”) prophetic of the D-minor inflections and dramatic syncopations of Don Giovanni. The gravitas is quickly dispelled in the following “Allegro”, whose comic twists and multi-layered (contrapuntal) textures are Figaro-like in inspiration—leading to one of Mozart’s most impressively constructed symphonic climaxes. The central “Andante” is pastoral in spirit, an oasis of calm between two storms. The finale—a high-spirited “Presto”—returns to the world of comic opera, and is actually based on a four-note motif taken from a duet in Figaro.