Concert of 9 February 1941

A great premiere for Furtwängler: he performed Mozart's Serenade for 13 wind instruments, K.361, the ‘Gran Partita’, for the first time.

He programmed it several times around that time, both in Vienna and Berlin. He only performed it again in concert in Vienna and on tour with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1949 and 1950. Between the two: an exceptional recording at the end of 1947, with the same orchestra, for HMV.

Two key elements need to be highlighted.

As the programme reveals, Furtwängler conducted only five of the seven movements, leaving out the second Menuetto and the Romance. A glance at other programmes leads to this same conclusion, or even to that of a selection of just four movements. This allowed him to include this monument on tour alongside, for example, The Unfinished, La Mer, and the Cinquième. And as he did not perform all the repeats, the 45-minute work was reduced to less than half an hour, a duration consistent with the rest of a purely symphonic programme. It seems that he only conducted it in its entirety during the Mozart concerts on 8 February 1949 and 27 January 1952, and, of course, for the recording.

Today's score shows double bass (with strings) or contrabassoon; older editions show the opposite, confirming the work's original version: 13 winds. Furtwängler always used the contrabassoon, as did his contemporaries Klemperer and Böhm. A question of sound — more 'rich' or 'full-bodied' — but also of presence and attack.