The music
The music, explained
The works named in the fortress concert's printed programme, in plain terms: Mozart's serenade and quintet, Haydn, Schubert's Trout, and the waltzes.
Book the fortress concert ↗Quick answer
The programme extract names Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, a Mozart piano quartet and the Clarinet Quintet, a Haydn string quartet, Schubert's Trout Quintet, and waltzes and a polka by Dvořák and J. Strauss. It is chamber music, written for a few players. Because the organiser may modify the programme, any night can differ.
Eine kleine Nachtmusik
Wikipedia gives the full name as Serenade No. 13 in G major, K. 525, completed in Vienna on 10 August 1787, around the time Mozart was working on the second act of Don Giovanni. Why he wrote it is unknown, and it reached print only around 1827. The title is a note in Mozart's own catalogue of his works, meaning a little night music. Four movements survive, and the catalogue lists a fifth that is lost.
The piano quartets
Mozart wrote two. Wikipedia says No. 1 in G minor, K. 478, dates from 1785 and came from a commission by the publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister, who thought it too difficult for amateurs. Nine months later Mozart wrote No. 2 in E-flat major, K. 493. A piano quartet pairs a piano with violin, viola and cello. The booking page names only a piano quartet, so you cannot know which one you will hear. Wikipedia adds that Hoffmeister released Mozart from the commission after the first quartet, which Mozart then followed with the second anyway.
The Clarinet Quintet
The Clarinet Quintet, K. 581, was finished on 29 September 1789 for the clarinettist Anton Stadler, a friend of Mozart's. It is for one clarinet and a string quartet. Wikipedia calls it Mozart's only completed clarinet quintet and one of the most admired of his works. The clarinet leads without taking over, and the quintet closes with a theme and variations.
Haydn and the string quartet
Joseph Haydn, who lived from 1732 to 1809, is called the father of the string quartet. Wikipedia says the form was developed from his works of the 1750s onward, and it quotes Goethe describing quartet music as four rational people conversing. Two violins, a viola and a cello share the talk more or less equally. The printed extract names only a Haydn string quartet, and he wrote a great many.
The Trout Quintet
Schubert composed his Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667, in 1819, and it was published in 1829, a year after his death. It uses piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass. The nickname comes from the fourth movement, a set of variations on his earlier song Die Forelle, The Trout. Wikipedia says the patron Sylvester Paumgartner, an amateur cellist from Steyr, suggested the variations.
Waltzes and a polka
The printed extract ends with waltzes by Dvořák and waltzes and a polka by J. Strauss, and the booking page gives no more detail than that. The Strauss family of Vienna included several composers, and Wikipedia notes that Johann Strauss II was the son of a composer of the same name. The polka began in nineteenth-century Bohemia, the homeland of Dvořák, who was born there in 1841. These are the lightest pieces in the printed extract.
Who this isn't for
If you hope for a symphony orchestra, opera arias or a piano concerto, this is the wrong concert. The pieces are chamber works for a handful of players, and the organiser warns that the programme can change. The booking page gives the extract and not a guaranteed running order, so read this guide as background and not as a promise of what you will hear on your date. If one of these works is the reason you are going, ask the organiser before you book.
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