TINTNER MEMORIAL EDITION VOLUME 7
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Overture to Idomeneo, K.366 Performance recorded 3rd March 1991
Symphony No.34 in C major, K.388 Performance recorded 15th February 1989
Symphony No.41 in C major, K.551, 'Jupiter' Performance recorded 24th January 1988
The eight weeks from 17th June to 11th August 1788 are among
the most significant in the history of the spirit. One knows the dates for a
very horrible reason. Mozart wrote his last three symphonies in these amazingly
short eight weeks, and he wrote one letter on the day he started to compose the
first of them, No.39, and he wrote another letter ten days later, the day after
he completed it. Both were to a Count Puchberg who was, like Mozart himself, a
Freemason, begging him for money. Begging him on the 17th and begging him even
more urgently on the 27th. He said among other things, "Believe me, dear Count,
I only write music in order to make money." When one hears how one of the
greatest of all minds had to humiliate himself to that extent, one feels terribly
guilty and small. And there are not only these two letters, there are many of
them. It makes you so ashamed to read them.
Mozart's fate was particularly tragic in that he started
very happily. His father was a violin teacher who wrote a famous book on violin
playing. He was a rather hard, unbending, very righteous and may I say
self-righteous man, and he was not slow in discovering the unusually precocious
talents of his son. Father Mozart tried to develop them for the greater glory
of God - or so he said. That it would be helpful to him as well is undisputed.
Mozart very quickly made great progress both as an instrumentalist (he was a
violinist and pianist) and as a composer. In the beginning his success was
enormous, because he was in the highest sense of the word an entertainer, and I
do not say that in any disrespectful way. But the more personal, the more
profound his music became the less people took notice of him. And here, as a
Viennese, I must say that my city played a very shameful part in the life of
Mozart, as in the life of many other great composers. The one Vienna really
treated well was Brahms, and Johann Strauss. That is not very much when you
think how many lived there. In any case Mozart, who was perhaps the most
universal of all musical geniuses - he excelled at any and every musical form
and was better than anybody else in them - was very keen from earliest days to
write operas. His first really great opera, Idomeneo, was not written for
Vienna but for Munich and has never really succeeded, although to me it is one
of his greatest works. I absolutely adore it.
In Salzburg his "boss" was an equally unbending clergyman,
Bishop Colloredo, and he exploited Mozart just as his father did. Mozart was a
very gentle person, but when he felt that this bishop treated him like dirt and
he could not stand it any longer he decided to go to Vienna and try his luck
there. Symphony No.34 was the last symphony he wrote before he moved to the
metropolis, a move he often had reason to regret. If you come to think of it,
in his early twenties he had already written 34 symphonies. This is by far the
greatest he wrote before he went; it is sheer delight and entertainment in the
highest sense of the word. He wants us to be happy when we listen to this glorious
music. It is just lovely.
The final and, at least in a technical sense, crowning glory
of his symphonic ceuvre is No.41. It is impossible for me to do justice to the
particular miracle of the last movement. Let it suffice to say that it is a
unique combination of fugue and the sonata form. There are no fewer than five
different tunes which are in certain strategic positions juxtaposed on top of
each other especially in the final confrontation of these tunes. And what is so
wonderful is that after all these tremendously brainy things there come some
happy, easy-going bars and you think nothing has happened.
The most remarkable thing to me about these last three
symphonies is not the speed with which Mozart, who was 32 years old, wrote
them, but that the mood of each is totally different: the first of serene
tranquility, the second of utter despair, and the third a triumph over
everything. You may think that though he finished the first on 26th June he had
plenty of time beforehand to think about it. That unfortunately is not so. He
completed the Piano Trio in E major only four days earlier. Perhaps he thought
of these three symphonies in the meantime, but it is a thing ordinary people
cannot understand, and we can only be grateful such supermen exist.
Georg Tintner
edited by Tanya Tintner
Georg Tintner
Georg Tintner was born in Vienna in 1917. He began studying
piano at the age of six and to compose soon after. From nine to thirteen he was
a member of the Vienna Boys Choir, where he also conducted the choir in
performances of his own compositions. At thirteen he entered the Vienna State
Academy as a composition prodigy, studying composition with Josef Marx and
conducting with Felix Weingartner. At eighteen he was the conductor of a
training choir of the Vienna Boys Choir, and trained the choir for a
performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony with Bruno Walter in 1936. His
compositions were being performed in concert and broadcast by Austrian Radio,
and at nineteen he became assistant conductor at the Vienna Volksoper.
In 1938 he fled the Nazis, spending a year in England before
emigrating to New Zealand. For several years he ran a poultry farm - as a
result of which he became a total vegetarian - before becoming Music Director
of the Auckland String Players and Auckland Choral Society in 1947. He was also
an avowed socialist and pacifist, and as such he rode a bicycle as "a symbol of
the ultimate in harmlessness".
In 1954 he went to Australia as Resident Conductor of the
National Opera and then the Elizabethan Opera. In the following years he toured
Australia widely and pioneered television opera with the Australian
Broadcasting Commission. In 1964 he was Music Director of the New Zealand
Opera, and in 1966-67 was Music Director of the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra.
Although offered an extended contract, Tintner left for political reasons. He
went to London and Sadler's Wells (English National Opera) for three years,
with guest appearances with the London Mozart Players, the Bournemouth Symphony
Orchestra, the Northern Sinfonia and the London Symphony Orchestra for the BBC.
He returned to Australia in 1970 as Music Director of the
West Australian Opera Company. In 1971 he was invited as Music Director of the
National Youth Orchestra of Canada, a visit so successful that it was repeated
seven times. Tintner had a special rapport with young musicians, conducting
many concerts with the national youth orchestras of several countries. A 1974
series of lectures have been broadcast many times in English-speaking
countries, and he was renowned for his concert introductions, some of which may
be heard in this edition.
Tintner's repertoire included 56 operas, about two-thirds of
which he conducted from memory. In 1974 he became Senior Resident Conductor of
the Australian Opera for two years. While there he conducted now-legendary
performances of Fidelio, expressive of his lifelong commitment to compassionate
humanism. From 1976 Tintner was Music Director of the Queensland Philharmonic
Orchestra until moving to Canada at the end of 1987 as Music Director of
Symphony Nova Scotia. He appeared with all Australian, New Zealand orchestras
and opera companies, and later with all major Canadian orchestras including the
Montreal and Toronto Symphony Orchestras. In the United States he toured with
the Canadian Brass and appeared with the Michigan Opera Theatre.
He made many commercial recordings, including some for the
CBC which are being reissued in the present Memorial Edition. His Naxos series
of all eleven Bruckner symphonies brought him worldwide acclaim in his final
two years.
Georg Tintner has been honoured in four countries. He was
awarded several honorary doctorates, and honours including the Officer's Cross
of the Austrian Order of Merit. He was a Member of the Order of Canada
He died in Halifax in October 1999.
Tanya Tintner
Symphony Nova Scotia
Symphony Nova Scotia (SNS) is Canada's only fully
professional symphony orchestra east of Quebec City. Founded in 1983, the 37
musicians of Symphony Nova Scotia have a mandate "to enhance the quality of
life of citizens of Nova Scotia." Symphony Nova Scotia is dedicated to sharing
live classical music with audiences across Nova Scotia through its concerts,
and with all Canadians through its many CBC broadcasts. The orchestra also
collaborates with other music, theatre, and dance partners, and has recently
established the Symphony Nova Scotia Chorus.
musicians on this recording:
Concertmaster: Philippe Djokic, George Maxman. Violin: Janet Dunsworth, Chun-He Gao,
Samuel Glazman, Beverley Grove, Mishan Han, Celeste Jankowski, Nancy Kershaw,
Ryan Kho, Dorota Kwiecinska, Karen Langille, Noel Laporte, Anita Gao Lee, Yi
Lee, Anne Rapson, Peter Stryniak, David Thompson, Christopher Wilkinson. Viola: Chantale Boivin, Binnie Brennan,
Yvonne DeRoller, Sara Hartland-Rowe, Susan Sayle, Burt Wathen. Cello: Hilary Brown, Pierre Djokic,
Paul Mahr, David Moulton, Laszlo Muranyi, Mark Rodgers, Shimon Walt. Bass: Max Kasper, Lena Turofsky,
Catherine Williams. Flute: Lucie
Batteke, Patricia Creighton, Elizabeth Dubois, Christine Feierabend. Oboe: Suzanne Lemieux, Margaret
Pheby. Clarinet: Margaret Isaacs,
John Rapson. Bassoon: Christopher
Palmer, Ivor Rothwell. Horn: Steven
Field, Margaret Howard, Mary Lee, Robert McCosh. Trumpet: Mark Dharmaratnam, Jeffrey Stern, Geoffrey
Thompson. Timpani: Michael Baker.
In the recordings in this series the second violins are
placed on the right of the conductor, for the antiphonal effect between first
and second violins these composers expected to hear.
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Spoken Introduction by Georg Tintner - 4:42 
