Bedtime Music: Mozart - Serenade #10 for Winds, 3rd Movement (Adagio)

Tonight's Bedtime Music is another beautiful piece that was highlighted in a movie, this time the Third Movement (Adagio) of Serenade #10 for Winds by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Serenade as a whole (there are seven movements) was written sometime between 1781 and 1784 with most authorities apparently viewing the earlier date as more probable. However, it is known that the Serenade was performed publicly in a concert on March 23, 1784.

Wikipedia has a very short description of the Third Movement, which reads:

Described by Goodwin* as “virtually an ‘operatic’ ensemble of passionate feeling and sensuous warmth”, the third movement, marked Adagio, is in E flat major. A syncopated pulse occurs almost throughout the movement while solo lines alternate between the solo oboe, clarinet and basset horn.

* Noel Goodwin, CD liner notes for Mozart: Three Wind Serenades, Sinfonia Concertante, ASV CD COS 242

However, it is in clips such as the following that highlight how woeful my musical education has been (despite all my years in performing). F. Murray Abraham (in the role of Antonio Salieri) describes the beginning of the Third Movement in a way I would find very difficult, if not impossible, to do -- and wish I could.