Multi-award-winning conductor Bernard Haitink leads the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. They perform Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Haffner Symphony.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed the Symphony No. 35 in D major, K. 385, known as the Haffner Symphony, in 1782. As early as 1776 he had been commissioned to compose a serenade for the wedding of the Salzburg bridal couple Franz Xaver Späth and Maria Elisabeth Haffner, the daughter of Salzburg’s mayor Sigmund Haffner. The Haffner Serenade is Mozart’s most extensive serenade (KV 250) and has eight movements.
Six years later, he was to compose another serenade on the occasion of the award of the title of nobility “Edler von Innbachhausen” to Sigmund Haffner Junior. Mozart arranged it as a symphony by omitting the movements 2 to 4 or 5 of the serenade composed for Haffner’s wedding, thus creating an independent work.
Bernard Haitink began his conducting career with Netherlands Radio: he became chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in 1957. Later he was principal conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and held this position for 27 years. Today he is patron of the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Honorary Conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Bernard Haitink has also been Music Director of the Glyndebourne Festival and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Chief Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He is an honorary member of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and since 2019, the Vienna Philharmonic. He has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Gramophone Lifetime Achievement Award.
00:49 Allegro con spirito
09:25 Andante
15:33 Menuetto
18:33 Presto