Contrary to earlier beliefs, the evidence indicates that Mozart heard the three symphonies #39, 40, and 41 performed during the final years of his life. He had orchestra parts copied, an expense he would not have incurred unless he needed them for a performance. He also went to the trouble of re-orchestrating the G-minor Symphony to add clarinets, an effort that would have made no sense unless the Symphony were going to be played. Mozart included symphonies in concerts he gave in Leipzig in 1789 and Frankfurt in 1790, and a Mozart symphony was performed at a concert led by Antonio Salieri in Vienna in 1791.
The Symphony in E-flat is unusual in several respects. It is the only symphony from Mozart’s adulthood that does not use oboes, which means that the clarinets are given unusual prominence. It also has a slow introduction, a common feature in symphonies of the day, but rare in Mozart.
Both the ambling Andante con moto and the bounding, energetic Minuet are typical of Mozart’s mature symphonies. The middle section of the Minuet, with one clarinet playing a simple but unforgettable little tune over the other clarinet’s bubbly arpeggios, would be at home in any of the dances that Mozart was writing in his part-time job as Imperial court chamber composer.
The scrambling finale is not at all typical of Mozart. Mozart’s finales are often remarkable for their sheer number of melodic ideas, but the finale of this Symphony relies essentially on a single theme, explored and worked over. Such construction was a favorite device of Haydn, whose spirit is also heard in the movement’s sense of mischief, never more apparent than at the very end, when the theme gets in the last word, refusing to let the Symphony end with conventional final chords.
Here is the Frankfurt Radio Symphony in a performance of this masterpiece:
