CYCLES, dedicated to the Mozarteum Quartet of Salzburg, with whom I have collaborated for many years, was commissioned by the city of Augsburg on the occasion of the 58th German Mozart Festival. Point of departure and organizers’ criteria for the programme selection this evening was to represent Mozart in combination with Salzburg, just as has been done in other concerts of the Mozart Festival in the Mozart cities of Prague and Vienna. For the Mozarteum Quartet my first thoughts turned to the early string quartets of Mozart.
These premises and my personal desire to avoid quotation of any kind encouraged me to probe more deeply – in search of a source of inspiration – Mozart’s string quartet activity in general, with an eye to its cyclical nature, and thus the title CYCLES evolved of itself: The material of the five movements draws upon the fact that Mozart’s quartets were as a rule produced in cycles of six (K.155-160, 168-173, 387-465), the beginning and end of his entire output marked by individual works (K.80 and K.499, 575, 589-590).
The central tonality of CYCLES (G) is the key of the “introductory work” K.80, the basic interval of the key progressions of the first cycle of six (K.155-160) the fifth, of the second cycle (K.168-173) the third. The third cycle (K.387-465) surprises us with a tritone as Mozart apparently intentionally laboured to avoid a typical interval in the progression of keys, at least in the final ordering of the quartets, if not in their chronology. In the last four Mozart quartets (K.499 etc.) the key repetition between the first two is particularly striking.
Playing with intervals is nothing new, but if the listener thereby gains a fresh visual and auditory insight into Mozart’s string quartets, then the purpose of CYCLES has been fulfilled and the epithet “New Music” is thus to my mind apt.