This symphony is urgent, passionate music in some sections. However, the beginning is soft, murmurous accompaniment waiting for its melody to emerge.
Schumann found the work “full of Hellenic grace,” but it is also full of sudden dislocations, such as the abrupt lurch into F-sharp minor for the development section of the opening movement, in which harmony is further stretched as Mozart obsesses with the head of the main theme. Amazingly, Mozart is able to increase tension throughout, into a coda of deepest, darkest feeling.
The Andante seems a lighter, brighter world, if only through the major key (E-flat) and more sedate pace. But Mozart takes this music to strange, chromatically unsettling, places, and the throbbing eighth notes prove as insistent as the more manic energies of the opening.
The bold Minuet is back in minor mode, and the Trio section, in G major, is the only music in the Symphony that Mozart did not change in his revision, making the oboes a particularly prominent dash of color.
Another long-spanned sonata form, the Finale movement seeks to answer the questions that the first movement had asked, with vehement energy. But it too enters development with expectation-shattering strokes and finds further terror there. Propulsive confidence reasserts itself, of course, and closes the Symphony with great brilliance.
Here is this masterpiece as performed by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra:
