From the Symphony No.1, composed when Mozart was just eight years old, to the mature and well-loved ‘Haffner’, ‘Prague’ and ‘Jupiter’ symphonies, this comprehensive 11-CD set collects together Mozart’s complete body of work in this genre, performed on period instruments by the Mozart Akademie Amsterdam and conducted by Jaap ter Linden. Mozart is recognised as one of the great composers of the Classical symphony, building upon the achievements made by his mentor Joseph Haydn to develop its form. At the time that he composed his Symphony No.1 in 1764, the symphony’s form was still closely linked to that of the French opera overture, with three short movements in a fast-slow-fast pattern. Gradually, composers like Haydn began to expand this structure to the four-movement form that we are familiar with as the Classical symphony.These fascinating developments in style and structure can be heard in Mozart’s changing approach to symphonic composition throughout his career, and the booklet notes that accompany this release trace such developments in depth.

Also included in this collection are Mozart’s landmark symphonies, beginning with Symphonies Nos. 25 and 29, which were composed in 1773 and 1774. Here, the mature voice of Mozart the symphonist is truly established, and these works were followed by a string of masterpieces – Symphonies Nos. 31 ‘Paris, 35 ‘Haffner’, 36 ‘Linz’, 38 ‘Prague’, 39, 40 and 41 ‘Jupiter’, all written over a 10-year period.

These later works exerted a huge influence over the composers that followed, particularly Schubert and Mahler, who also replaced the courtly minuet of early symphonies with an Austrian Ländler, as Mozart did in the ‘Jupiter’ symphony.