Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Concerto for Flute and Orchestra No. 1 G major KV 313
Concerto for Flute and Orchestra No. 2 D major KV 314
Andante C-Dur KV 315 · Rondo D-Dur KV Anh. 184

Johann Baptist Wendling

Concerto for Flute and Orchestra C major
Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg
Ivor Bolton, conductor
Bernhard Krabatsch, flute

The flute was still undergoing constant development in Mozart’s day. Neither the sound nor the intonation of the instrument were equal to the challenges of demanding solo concertos. Not until he came into contact with Johann Baptist Wendling and his flute compositions did Mozart reach a new understanding of the flute’s possibilities and its inherent potential. In this recording, the soloist Bernahrd Krabatch plays a wooden transverse flute which however has a modern key mechanism. With this, he produces a darker, mellower sound without compromising on intonation and precision. He is accompanied by the Salzburg Mozarteum orchestra under Ivor Bolton, an ensemble which is regarded as a model for uniting both worlds – those of historical performance practice and modern orchestral tradition.

Bernhard Krabatsch

Flöte · Flute

Bernhard Krabatsch completed his studies with Wolfgang Schulz at the Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. As a prizewinner of the “Jugend musiziert” competition, he had already won the special prize of the Vienna Philharmonic‘s Vanausek Foundation for young musicians.

His career as a soloist has repeatedly taken him to such major European venues as the Salzburg Festival, the Berlin and Vienna Festivals, London, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam Summer Festival as well as Lucerne’s Easter Festival, where he has concertized with such musicians as Murray Perahia, Aurele Nicolet, Sándor Végh, Hubert Soudant, Jonas Swenson, Ivor Bolton, Giovanni Antonini or Leonidas Kavakos.

Bernhard Krabatsch is the solo flutist of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg and the Camerata Salzburg and teaches flute at the University Mozarteum in Salzburg.

Ivor Bolton

Chefdirigent · Chief conductor

Ivor Bolton became Chief Conductor of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg in 2004. He was Music Director of English Touring Opera in 1991/2, Music Director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera from 1992–1997, Chief Conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra from 1994–1996, and was the founding music director of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music and the St James’s Baroque Players in London.

Since his debut in 1994 Ivor Bolton has developed a close relationship with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich where he has conducted many new productions, including a sequence of Monteverdi and Handel operas. He was presented with the prestigious Bayerischer Theaterpreis by the Prime Minister of Bavaria in November 1998.

Ivor Bolton made his Covent Garden debut in 1995, and has enjoyed a long association with Glyndebourne. Other UK operatic engagements have taken him to English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, and Opera North.

He made his Salzburg Festival debut in 2000 with Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride and has returned every year since then to conduct, among other projects, three Mozart operas in the 2006 Mozart year, and Haydn’s Armida in the 2007 Festival (revived in 2009 alongside a new production of Handel’s Theodora). Elsewhere in Europe he appears regularly at the Maggio Musicale in Florence and in other major houses including Paris, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Brussels, Geneva, Dresden and Leipzig. Operatic engagements outside Europe have included San Francisco, Sydney, and Buenos Aires.

Ivor Bolton has worked with many of the UK’s principal symphony orchestras, as well as with leading orchestras throughout the world, where concert engagements in recent seasons included Vienna, Salzburg Festival, New York, Boston, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, Paris, Florence, Rotterdam, WDR Cologne, Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecelia in Rome, and the Zürich Tonhalle Orchestra, with whom he conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony over New Year 2005/6. He made his debut at the Proms in 1993, conducted Bach’s St John Passion at the Proms in 2000, and the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg in 2006.

Recent engagements include Peter Grimes in Dresden, Iphigenie en Tauride at Covent Garden and in Paris, Tamerlano in Munich, La Calisto at Covent Garden and Cavalli’s Ercole Amante for Netherlands Opera. Future projects include Medea in Corinto in Munich, Die Zauberflöte for the Wiener Staatsoper, Alceste for the Aix Festival, Tamerlano for Covent Garden, Jenufa for the Teatro Real in Madrid, and Billy Budd for the Netherlands Opera. As well as concerts with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg future orchestral engagements include Beethoven’s 9th on New Year’s Eve 2009/10 in Vienna, the NDR Hamburg, the Netherlands Philharmonic, and RAI Turin.

His many recordings with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg include Bruckner’s Symphonies Nos 3, 5, 7 and 9, Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ, Haydn’s Creation and The Seasons, as well as a wide repertoire of Mozart, and other recordings include Xerxes, Ariodante and Poppea from Munich.

Rediscovery of the sound of wood

Solo flutist Bernhard Krabatsch talks to Marco Frei about this CD

Mr. Krabatsch, to what extent have we forgotten the sound of the flute that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had in his ear when he composed his flute works?
There were many new developments in flute building during the 16th to 18th centuries. And there are many so-called original instrument ensembles today that are rediscovering the sounds from those times. Of course, audiences must get used to new sound worlds, and I must admit that I had to do the same at the beginning. In regard to Mozart, I would like to quote Sándor Végh, who once said to us at a rehearsal in Salzburg that Mozart knew exactly how the flute should sound. And when you think about it, you realize that although Mozart included beautiful passages for flute in his orchestral works and operas and used it prominently, he was not particularly happy about the sound of the instrument.

Why is this?
During Mozart’s time, Johann Joachim Quantz had tinkered around a lot with the flute, to put it bluntly, but it was still unclear in what direction these developments would continue. In one of his letters, Mozart noted that he couldn’t stand the intonation of the flute. At the time, the finger holes were not bored in precise positions, but only approximately. This situation didn’t change until Theobald Boehm began to scientifically calculate the correct positions for the holes. During the classical era, flutists were confronted with different pitches in all cities and orchestras where they played, which is why they all had different middle joints for their instruments. These also enabled them to play in different keys. I believe that Mozart had a distinct idea of what a flute should sound like.

How should we imagine this sound today?
I think that this sound is a wooden flute sound – certainly not as loud and brilliant as that of a modern flute, but definitely with their improved intonation. Wooden flutes have a darker, softer and earthier tone than modern metal flutes, and the transverse flutes of the time also had a more slender and lighter tone. Their sound may even have been ‘woodier’ than what one gets on today’s wooden flutes. It’s also important to think about dynamics: today’s metal flutes are simply too loud. When Boehm flutes were first used in Bayreuth, Richard Wagner could hardly stand their sound. He found them much too loud – like trumpets.

What instrument did you use for this CD?
I play a modern flute made of wood, built by the German flute builder Mehnert. The head joint is also made of wood. The mechanism, however, is modern. I started as a modern flute player, and around twelve years ago, I moved from a silver flute to gold and platinum and then finally to wood. At the time, I recorded myself and listened to the results. On the wooden flute, I found my playing truly authentic. On the metal flutes, I always had the feeling that the sound didn’t have much to do with me – that it was almost outside of me. It’s really hard to explain, but that’s the reason I started playing a wooden flute. I wanted to emulate the earthy and darker tone of the wood, otherwise I wouldn’t have made this decision. But it’s important to remember that a historical transverse flute sounds very different from a modern wooden flute, and there are definitely some questionable developments in wooden flute building.

Can you give some concrete examples?
I don’t want to name names, but some flute builders are trying to “optimize” wooden flutes. Unfortunately, the outcome is deceptive: on the outside, all you see is wood, but the embouchure hole is lined with metal. That isn’t anything new – it was done around 1900 as well. At the time, many orchestras were asking themselves whether they should be using wooden or metal flutes. The Vienna Philharmonic, for example, put the question up for a vote. Many other experiments were made during this time, e.g. flutes that were wooden on the outside and metal on the inside. And it can definitely happen that one tries a wooden flute and determines that instead, one could simply buy a new metal flute. But I think that builders should try to preserve the traditional art of wooden flute building.

In the Mozart flute concertos, you use cadenzas written by pianist Helmut Deutsch. Why?
There’s a personal reason for this. I studied with Wolfgang Schulz. He and Deutsch are good friends and played a lot of chamber music together. Deutsch sometimes asked me to turn pages for him during concerts. In the 1970s, Wolfgang Schulz had recorded all of Mozart’s works for flute and orchestra with the Mozarteum Orchestra under Leopold Hager, and Helmut Deutsch wrote all the cadenzas for these works. I like them because they don’t present the soloist, but are meant more as reflections with an improvisatory character.

This CD also includes the Flute Concerto in C Major by Johann Baptist Wendling, who belonged to the Mannheim School. It is known that Mozart orchestrated a flute concerto by him. Is this the only connection between Mozart and Wendling?
I feel that their encounter in Mannheim had major repercussions for the flute literature as a whole and had a major influence on Mozart’s relationship with the flute. We know that the two musicians had great respect for each other. The relationship to Wendling’s wife, soprano Maria Dorothea Wendling-Spurni, for whom Mozart also composed and who sang the role of Ilia at the premiere of Idomeneo, played an important role. It is apparent that after Mozart’s first meeting with Wendling, he began to use the flute in a different fashion.

Can one maintain that it was Wendling who – in Végh’s words – let Mozart know how the flute should sound?
I think that Wendling did in fact give Mozart a new conception of the flute sound and that he helped Mozart put his reservations about the instrument into perspective. From this time on, Mozart even began giving the flute solo passages in his scores.