The “Prague” Symphony was one of Mozart’s final compositions. In late 1786, The Marriage of Figaro debuted in Prague, where it was so successful that Mozart traveled to the city in January 1787 to see what was rumored to be an impressive production. From the first day of his visit, enthusiasm for his music was palpable. As he wrote to a friend of his first evening in Prague,

At six o’clock, I drove with Count Canal to the so-called Bretfeld Ball, where the cream of the beauties of Prague are wont to assemble. That would have been something for you, my friend … As for me, I didn’t dance, and I didn’t flirt. The first because I was too tired, the second because of my native bashfulness. But with the greatest joy, I watched all the people hopping around to their heart’s content to the music of my Figaro turned into Contratänze and Teutsche. For here they talk about nothing but Figaro; they play nothing, sing nothing, whistle nothing but Figaro; they go to no opera but Figaro and forever Figaro. Truly this is a great honor for me.

During his stay in the city, Mozart capitalized on his fame with a concert featuring a series of free improvisations on Figaro’s aria “Non più andrai” and a work possibly written for the excellent Prague orchestra (although it had premiered in Vienna a few months before): the Symphony No. 38 in D Major, K.504, later known as the “Prague” Symphony. As one listener gushed,

The theater had never been so full as on this occasion; never had there been such unanimous enthusiasm as that awakened by his heavenly playing. We did not, in fact, know what to admire most, whether the extraordinary compositions or his extraordinary playing; together they made such an overwhelming impression on us that we felt we had been bewitched. When Mozart had finished the concert, he continued improvising alone on the piano for half-an-hour. We were beside ourselves with joy and gave vent to our overwrought feelings in enthusiastic applause … The symphonies which he composed for this occasion are real masterpieces of instrumental composition, which are played with great élan and fire, so that the very soul is carried to sublime heights. This applied particularly to the grand Symphony in D Major, which is still [in 1798] always a favorite in Prague …

The “Prague” Symphony consists of three movements rather than the customary four. Despite this seemingly truncated form, the symphony holds boundless treasures. In the first movement, the dramatic, slow introduction in the minor mode is a glorious contrast to the principal theme, a buoyant, major-mode phrase strikingly like what would later become the well-known theme of the Overture to The Magic Flute. After the sensuous, serious Andante, Mozart begins the third movement with an opening theme based on a duet from The Marriage of Figaro, which must have delighted its appreciative audience. The energy, humor, and depth characteristic of Mozart’s comic operas provide fuel throughout.

A new compositional voice in demand worldwide, Viet Cuong hears music in nearly all aspects of everyday life. Born in California to Vietnamese immigrants, Cuong grew up in Georgia before studying composition at the Peabody Institute, Princeton University, and Curtis Institute of Music. He is currently the Pacific Symphony’s composer-in-residence and an assistant professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and renowned ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic, Eighth Blackbird, and the PRISM Quartet, have performed his music.

Next Week’s Trees is one of three original works Cuong composed as the Young American Composer-in-Residence with the California Symphony, a position he held from 2020 to 2023. Written for string orchestra, it was inspired by a poem by Mary Oliver called “Walking to Oak-Head Pond and Thinking of the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks.” It was premiered online during the pandemic in May 2021. Cuong considers both the poem and the piece a reflection of the pandemic, calling it “a gentle reminder of the uncertainty of the future, the confident hope of the present, and the propulsive force of life that drives us through any doubt that any new day will arrive.”

The motivation behind George Gershwin’s complex Piano Concerto in F Major came from a simple impulse, as he explained: “Many persons had thought that the Rhapsody [in Blue] was only a happy accident. Well, I went out, for one thing, to show them that there was plenty more where that had come from.” Following the success of Rhapsody in Blue in 1924, the New York Symphony Society commissioned a new work. In July 1925, Gershwin began composing his Piano Concerto in F Major, his most significant composition yet and the first he orchestrated himself (Ferde Grofé scored the first version of the Rhapsody). The concerto debuted on December 3, 1925, with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony and Gershwin as soloist. Subsequent performances were given in Washington, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

With the inevitable comparison to Rhapsody in Blue, the F Major Piano Concerto’s reception was somewhat mixed. While some criticized the work as less original than the Rhapsody, other listeners were more positive; one critic proclaimed that Gershwin “alone of all those writing the music of today … expresses us.” Rhythm and “atmosphere” dominate the concerto from the start. As the composer describes the opening Allegro (Energetic), it “employs the Charleston rhythm. It is quick and pulsating, representing the young, enthusiastic spirit of American life.” The ensuing Adagio—Andante con moto (Slow—Walking tempo, with motion) “has a poetic nocturnal atmosphere which has come to be referred to as the American blues, but in a purer form than that in which they [blues] are usually treated.” The concluding Allegro agitato (Agitated energy) is “an orgy of rhythms,” according to Gershwin, “starting violently and keeping the same pace throughout.”

In recent years, David Miller and Kevin Cole have worked with The Gershwin Initiative at the University of Michigan, an entity creating critical editions of all of Gershwin’s compositions. Gershwin often composed quickly, and his music exists in different versions, ultimately making it difficult to determine his original intent. The edition used in this performance features a more prominent solo part, a more significant amount of dissonance, and more complex harmonies than the version more familiar to audiences today.

Despite her many accomplishments, little information about Dana Suesse’s early life is available. She was born in 1909 in Kansas City and traveled the Midwest on the vaudeville circuit, performing as a pianist and dancer. She and her mother moved to New York City in 1926, where she started learning jazz composition with one of George Gershwin’s teachers and earned a reputation for improvising publicly on themes audience members suggested. At 19, Suesse published Syncopated Love Song, her first instrumental composition and the piece through which she established her reputation. Four years later, the orchestra leader Paul Whiteman commissioned the Concerto in Three Rhythms, which received its premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1932, along with works by Gershwin and Ferde Grofé.

Suesse said of the work’s composition, “I locked myself in my apartment and wouldn’t see anybody for ten days. I wrote the Concerto in Three Rhythms. It has three different styles blending together. First, there is the foxtrot, basically a sonata. Then, there is the blues style, basically an adagio. Finally, there is the jazz, the Italian fugue. You can imagine how I rushed to get through it in ten days … and it takes 20 minutes to play.” Suesse became reasonably well-off after her composition Moon About Town was featured in the Ziegfeld Follies. She shifted her focus to orchestral music after spending three years in Paris working with the gifted teacher Nadia Boulanger. Other than Gershwin, she was the only composer to perform as part of the national broadcasts of the General Motors Symphony. Suesse died in 1987, halfway through working on a musical. Given the number of intersections between Suesse’s and Gershwin’s careers—she was even known as “Girl Gershwin”—it is intriguing that comparatively little is known about her today.