On 21 April Dinis Sousa conducted wind players from Orquestra XXI in the Portuguese premiere of Jonathan Harvey’s Serenade (In Homage to Mozart). Sousa paired two movement work for ten players with Mozart’s Gran Partita serenade.

The Serenade was written in 1991 to mark the bicentenary of the Mozart’s death; the ten-minute piece prefaced performances of The Magic Flute at Glyndebourne Festival Opera. It draws on the music of The Magic Flute, ending with a loud, high E-flat major chord – the same that begins the singspiel. Papageno’s pipes are also represented at the beginning of the first movement, inspiring the rising, running figures of that section; Harvey also quotes his opera Inquest of Love (1993), elements of whose narrative are shaped by The Magic Flute. Watch a performance of the Serenade here.

Since the premiere it has received over fifty performances internationally. Among the five composers commissioned to write wind serenades celebrating Mozart for Glyndebourne in 1991 was Jonathan Dove, who wrote the Figaro­-inspired Figures in the Garden, premiered by members of The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and published by Faber Music. As it was to be performed in an English garden, Dove’s piece imagines Susanna singing her aria in the rain.