Johann Christian Bach studied in Italy and subsequently lived and worked in London, becoming composer to The King's Theatre. His music was a formative influence on the development of the Classical style. His opera Amadis has been described as "combining passages of stately Handelian melody with intimate Mozartian sensuousness."
Throughout Mozart's music, the key of D minor evokes shadowy supernatural forces, not least in the Piano Concerto No.20, and it is not until the third movement that a surprise modulation brings the music to a celebratory conclusion in the major. Pianist Ariel Lanyi won the Bronze Medal at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2021, and has performed with orchestras across the UK as well as in Israel and the USA. In 2022 he undertook a solo tour of Argentina, and this season he performs in London, Germany, Madrid, Australia, the USA and Colombia.
Beethoven's First Symphony, while naturally showing many resonances of Haydn and Mozart, is nevertheless original, unusual, and distinctive from the very first note. It begins with two chords which sound like the end of a piece - a perfect cadence. But the cadence is in the "wrong" key! Then there are two more chords, in a different key - different, but still not the key of the piece! The musicologist Donald Tovey, who wrote extensively about the works of a very wide range of composers, called this symphony "a comedy of manners."
This is the third and final concert in Suffolk Philharmonic's Celebration Sundays series, exploring aspects of the Classical style in works ranging from the pre-Classical with J.C. Bach's overture to the opera Amadis (from 1729), to the high classical in Mendelssohn's little-known overture The Fair Melusine, written in 1834.