The opening concert of the 2013 Boston Early Music Festival featured Mozart’s violin and viola, played by Amandine Beyer and Milos Valent, respectively, and accompanied by Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano, plus Eric Hoeprich, baroque clarinet. The instruments belong to the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation and are normally heard only at the Mozart-Wohnhaus, which also houses one of Mozart’s fortepianos. This was the first time the violin and viola have been brought to the United States, and the program showcased the instruments in various chamber music works.

The Mozarteum Foundation has three principal functions: 1) to manage two museums, the Geburtshaus (birthplace) and Wohnhaus (residence) of the Mozart family, which serve as permanent exhibit halls for Mozart relics; 2) to present concerts, especially during the Mozartwoche around the time of the composer’s birthday in late January; and 3) to conduct research on Mozart’s life and music. This concert brought all three aspects of its mission to light. The violin, falsely attributed to J. Stainer, was probably built in about 1700 in Mittenwald in southern Bavaria, most likely by the Klotz family of violin makers. Its provenance is fairly straightforward: having passed from Mozart’s sister Nannerl, who gave it to the father of one of her students in 1820, it was eventually acquired, unaltered, by the Mozarteum in 1955, in time for the bicentennial celebrations of Mozart’s birth. The viola, made in northern Italy around 1700, has a slightly more complicated history: it was listed in Mozart’s estate catalogue and valued at only 4 gulden, and was purchased by a lawyer and amateur musician in Vienna. In the nineteenth century it was altered and repaired, and eventually came into the possession of the Earl of Spenser in Great Britain and came to the Mozarteum in 1966. Ulrich Leisinger, research director at the Mozarteum, describes the violin and viola as “good quality but not first-rank instruments.”

Nevertheless, this was a great opportunity in Boston to hear the instruments that Mozart played and wrote for (the fortepiano was a copy of a Walter, c. 1785–95, made be R.J. Regier in Freeport, Maine, in 1998). The concert opened and closed with two of Mozart’s Op. 1, nos. 3 and 6, in C major and D major (K. 303 and 306). These accompanied sonatas, for keyboard and violin, were written in Mannheim and Paris in 1777–78. From his letters home during this period, we know that Mozart traveled with his violin and performed reluctantly on occasion, and that on 6 October 1777 from Munich he sent Nannerl a set of duets for keyboard and violin by Joseph Schuster, which Mozart thought were “not bad.” He promised to write a set of six himself in the same popular style, and he fulfilled this pledge within the year. His six sonatas were engraved by Jean-Georges Sieber in Paris, and dedicated and presented to keyboard-playing Electress Elisabeth Auguste in Munich in January 1779.

Unlike most of his contemporaries’ accompanied sonatas, the keyboard and violin have approximately equal roles in Mozart’s Op. 1; the keyboard was clearly the leading instrument in the earliest published works of the young Mozart (K. 6–15 and K. 26–31). The first movement of K. 303 has a composite construction with an Adagio followed by an Allegro molto, with embellishments (varied reprises) in the return of the Adagio. The second movement is a conventional Tempo di Menuetto. K. 306 has three movements, instead of two as in the other five pieces in the set. It opens with an Allegro con spirito, followed by a beautiful Andantino cantabile, and closes with an Allegretto in the form of a sonata-rondo. The violin had a delicate, even tone in the hands of Amandine Beyer, whether playing piano or forte, and it was perfectly balanced by Kristian Bezuidenhout on the fortepiano.

The second piece featured Bezuidenhout, who has become a favourite at the Early Music Festival. He chose Mozart’s Prelude and Fugue for piano solo in C major, K. 394, a piece written for Baron van Swieten’s musical soirées in 1782, when Mozart was learning to master the contrapuntal style of J.S. Bach and Handel. This work also shows the more galant influence of C.P.E. Bach, and Mozart’s writing is extremely intimate and refined, almost too refined for a room as large as Jordan Hall. But the “Kenner” (connoisseurs) and “Liebhaber” (amateurs) in the audience relished Bezuidenhout’s dazzling technique.

Next came the“Kegelstatt” Trio for clarinet, viola, and fortepiano in E-flat major, K. 498, probably written for Mozart’s keyboard pupil Franziska von Jacquin, his clarinettist friend Anton Stadler, and himself on the viola. The nickname“Kegelstatt” (skittles alley) dates from the mid-nineteenth century and appears to have been confused for the annotation Mozart wrote on the autograph of the Twelve Duos for two horns, K. 487, dated 27 July 1786 “untern Kegelschreiben”(while playing skittles). Nevertheless, the Trio K. 498 continues to be known by its nickname, but it certainly reflects the congeniality Mozart enjoyed with his friends. Indeed, the “conversation” between the instruments undoubtedly mimics the lively discussion, whether joking or serious, of Jacquin’s social circle. The instruments are treated as equals: the clarinet alternates the lead with the treble of the keyboard, and the viola plays the role either of an alto with the clarinet’s mezzo soprano, or a tenor with the keyboard’s bass. Eric Hoeprich gave a supple reading on the clarinet, but the viola sounded a little wolfish at times, perhaps reflecting some of the rebuilding it suffered in the nineteenth century.

This defect was less apparent after the interval in the Duo for violin and viola in G major, K. 423. Mozart wrote two Duos (K. 423 and 424) during his last visit to Salzburg in the autumn of 1783 as a favour to Michael Haydn to fill out a set of six works for violin and viola. These works are pieces that Mozart and his father might have played together at home, and they were also likely performed for his former employer, Archbishop Colloredo. Here Beyer and Valent played in nearly perfect accord, and at times you had to marvel that there were only two instruments playing instead of three or four. The final Rondeau: Allegretto is especially gemütlich. No wonder Mozart has remained a popular and beloved composer.

Does Mozart’s music sound better on his own instruments? No, I think you would always prefer an excellent Stradivarius over these decent but lesser instruments. In particular, we can only imagine how brilliantly the viola would have sounded in Mozart’s hands, before its extensive restoration. But it is fairly certain that these did belong to Mozart, and therefore we are close to the sounds he imagined as he wrote his music. I would have liked to hear these works played in the Tanzmeistersaal in the Wohnhaus in Salzburg, where the acoustics would be more appropriate than Jordan Hall. But it was a treat to hear Mozart’s violin and viola in such a diverse and imaginative program.

For further reading, I can recommend the collection of essays edited by Martin Harlow, Mozart’s Chamber Music with Keyboard (Cambridge University Press, 2012).