Many things in life are not as simple as they seem. With music mirroring every aspect of human emotion, it was inevitable that it would have it's share of duplicity too... click to listen

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Cosi fan Tutti: Overture
Conductor: Louis de Froment

Feminism hadn't really reached Vienna in the late 18th Century. Libertine attitudes held that women would surrender themselves to any suitor persistent (or insistent) enough, and this assumption provides the basis for the plot of this opera.

A cynical philosopher makes a bet with two young soldiers, claiming that women cannot be faithful. To prove him wrong, the men pretend to go off to war, returning in disguise. The girls do not recognise the men, but are seduced by each others boyfriends.

It is a peculiar feature of many operas that the characters are taken in by the shabbiest of disguises. This is probably because if the disguises were any good, the audience would not recognise the characters, and not understand what was going on.

When the whole plot is revealed the men marry the girls anyway, concluding that they might as well live with them because all women are just as fickle.

While clearly demonstrating outdated attitudes towards female sexual independance, Cosi fan Tutti is a product of its time. It is a farcical comedy, and the subject matter is more indicative of the attitudes and interests of the audience than of the composer.

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

Scheherezade
Conductor: Barry Wordsworth
 

Rimsky Korsakov's Symphonic Suite is only based loosely on the story of Scherezade. The music uses broad brushstrokes to summon the atmsophere of a mysterious near-eastern adventure.

The story goes that the Sultan Schahriar who has become convinced that women are faithless. He has vowed to execute each of his wives after their first night together, but he meets his match with Scheherezade.

Every night, she tells him a bedtime story so full of suspense that he does not not have her executed until the cliffhangers are resolved. After 1001 nights, the King relents and Scheherezade is spared.

A notable feature of this piece is the solo violin, played by the leader of the orchestra. The fiendishly difficult solos are said to represent the beautiful and flirtatious Scherezade herself. The heavy brass theme of the opening is suposed to represent the Sultan.

With four episodes each giving us a named excerpt of the Princesses tales, one can only wonder what Rimsky Korsakov would have done if he'd had time to write the other 997.

Edward Elgar

Enigma Variations
Conductor:  Yehudi Menuhin

Elgar's Engima variations seeks to give a musical representation of thirteen of Elgars friends, as well as the composer himself.

The "Enigma" is that the whole piece has a tune hidden within it, but nobody knows what it is. Elgar's method of orchestration was always to pass tunes between instruments, rather than having one person play it from start to finish. With the secret tune, he has spread it out so much that it disappears altogether.

The question of the mysterious theme has become one of the most hotly debated topics in the history of music. Other contenders include the matter of Mozart's mysterious death.

The most famous of the variations, Nimrod gives a musical account of a conversation with his best friend August Jaeger. Jaeger is rumoured to have been one of the few people who knew what the Engima was.

Although now regarded as the composer of some of the most noble and patriotic English music, Elgar was not a member of the nobility. When Queen Victoria invited him to tea, he declined the offer, announcing that as the "son of a piano tuner", he would have been a disgrace to their table. He still got his knighthood.