Serenade No. 10 in B‑Flat Major

Few compositions by Mozart better illustrate his innate understanding of wind instruments than the Serenade No. 10. Scored for an ensemble requiring 13 performers, including pairs of oboes, clarinets, basset horns and bassoons, as well as four horns and a double bass, it’s a work conceived on the grandest scale, and it received an auspicious first performance at a benefit concert in Vienna in 1784. The Serenade’s seven movements juxtapose different musical functions, some with symphonic dimensions, others more closely associated with outdoor entertainment music. The first movement’s symphonic proportions are immediately evident in the imposing, full-blooded chords of the slow introduction, which lead directly into the tautly argued and rhythmically propulsive “Allegro”. Equally expansive is the glorious third-movement “Adagio”, where oboe, clarinet, and basset horn entrance the listener with a sequence of exquisitely designed long-breathed melodic lines. The two “Minuets”, which constitute the second and fourth movements, are much simpler in design, though Mozart secures maximum interest by ensuring that the contrasting trio sections feature infinitely varied instrumental combinations. The same can also be said of the fifth-movement “Romanza”, in which the magical textures of an expressive “Adagio” frame a sprightly middle-section “Allegretto” that challenges the breathing stamina of bassoon players with incredibly fast-moving passage work. For the “Allegro molto” finale, Mozart really goes for broke, unleashing the full ensemble in a movement whose obsessively rhythmic and boisterous main theme is guaranteed to bring the house down.