Mozart: Violin Concertos

Chloe Chua’s debut with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in September 2020 was far from ideal. Thanks to the COVID pandemic, the then 13-year-old Chua found herself on the stage with the SSO performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 2 to an empty hall. “I felt pretty awkward,” she tells Apple Music Classical. “I was just playing for a huge camera.” That potentially unnerving first encounter, however, grew into a fruitful relationship with the orchestra and its conductor Hans Graf. Just a couple of years later they embarked on a major project together to record all of Mozart’s works for solo violin and orchestra over a two-year period. “Within that period, the violin concertos were my main repertoire,” says Chua, “so I was totally immersed in Mozart’s music.” Mozart composed the first of his five solo violin concertos in 1773, when he was 17, while Chua was just 15 when she started recording them. She plays them with a remarkable empathy, bringing out their sweet and expressive lyricism. Her understanding of this music, she readily admits, was enhanced by Hans Graf, a noted Mozart specialist. “Sometimes Maestro [Graf] would sing a melody to demonstrate its nuance to me. He did this to suggest how the dynamics for the Turkish march in the finale of No. 5 should be done.” That colourful finale, in which Mozart interrupts the civilised lilt of a Viennese-style minuet with a wild “Turkish” march, is just one reason why that concerto is a favourite of Chua’s. Another reason is its opening movement. “Normally the soloist would make their first entry with fast, showy music,” she explains, “but in No. 5, the soloist starts quite unexpectedly with a slow and beautiful melody.” Though the Fifth is the most striking of the five solo concertos, the most challenging, Chua says, is No. 4. “It has so many high notes, including this high C which is the highest note Mozart ever wrote for a violin. It’s quite uncomfortable to reach, and it presents a challenge for the violinist to play it with the taste and style appropriate for Mozart’s music.” Also in the set is Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, a later work composed in 1779, involving violin and viola soloists. Here, Mozart sets the soloists up as close collaborators, often playing in parallel like two duetting singers. Chua is joined here by Chinese musician Ziyu He. “Many people tend to think of him as a really good violin player,” says Chua; “but his viola playing is excellent, and really complements my style. We’re on the same frequency when we perform, which I think is important for this chamber-like music.” One of the most beguiling gems on Chua’s album is her performance of the Adagio, K. 261, the first concertante work of Mozart’s she ever studied. It has something of the wistfulness of the Countess’ aria in The Marriage of Figaro, yet was originally written by Mozart in 1776, aged 20, some 10 years before he completed that opera. “He composed this when he was quite young,” says Chua, “and I could really relate to its childlike character. Its style just comes naturally to me.”