Stravinsky was an enthusiastic poker player. The stakes are also high in his ballet music, “Jeux de cartes”. Here, cunning and intrigue set the tone of the card game, and a guileful joker keeps disturbing its course. It is all highly amusing and very exciting. A good hundred years earlier, the 20-year-old Chopin wrote his F minor Piano Concerto. It was a contented period of his life. He had successfully completed his studies at the conservatoire and went on to spend happy, stimulating months in Warsaw with his family and friends. This can be heard in his piano concerto, a light-hearted but equally intimate work, with a youthful delight in pianistic virtuosity characterising almost every bar. A further thirty years earlier, on 10th August 1788, Mozart entered his freshly completed Symphony K. 551 into his catalogue of works with the following words: “ Eine Sinfonie. – 2 violini, 1 flauto, 2 oboe, 2 fagotti, 2 Corni, 2 clarini, Timpany, viole e Baßi.” It was to remain Mozart’s last symphony, and only received the epithet “Jupiter” with the romantic notions of the 19th century. It is indeed sublime, perhaps even “godlike” music, a high point in Mozart’s oeuvre, especially in the artfully constructed final movement, which almost overflows with ideas. This is Mozart at his best, exuding a creativity that knows no bounds.
