The six Ovid Symphonies (or "Sinfonias") by part-time Forest-Warden, raconteur, Court Official and Kapellmeister Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-99) are much the best known of the many symphonies written by this prolific and gifted contemporary of Mozart. They survive in their original manuscript form, and in their overall representative content, each may be said to typify the Rococo-Enlightenment period's unending fascination with the restitution of Classical and mythological subject matter, as reflected in countless musical compositions of the period.

The penultimate installment in this six-symphony cycle after Ovid's Metamorphoses, a 15- volume survey of Greek and Roman legend, takes as its theme a lurid tale contained in the sixth book. Dittersdorf's orchestral setting (using pairs of flutes, oboes, and horns with the usual strings) is in fact the most Classically disposed of the series, following the precisely ordained formal semantics of the genre with almost total compliance.

The opening movement of the four, a lightly scored Allegretto non troppo presto, presents a watery pastoral image of peasants gathering reeds ("agrestes illic fruticosa legebant, vimina cum iuncis gratamque paludibus ulvam") to thatch their dwellings. Set in conventional sonata form, with full exposition and development sections, the principal themes are elegantly crafted. The first group, in vigorous peasant-style, features a rustic melody for first violins and flute. A contrasting second group, in fast-moving eighth notes, suggests the jubilant, un-troubled toil of the harvesters at the water's edge. The angular development, with its fragmented version of theme 1, offers little hint of the tragic denouement to follow.

The slow movement, a true Adagio, is reflective in character, and features a broad melody line in conversational style for the violins, above a slow moving bass line. While there is no Latin superscription, the foreboding dotted-note interpolations for unison strings which follow represent the Goddess Leto (mother of Apollo and Artemis) who seeks to drink and bathe in the waters, but is forbidden to do so by the peasants. To make doubly sure, they muddy the waters, and in her anger, Leto condemns them all to live in the pond for evermore as frogs.

The movement comes to rest on a dominant seventh chord, and the Minuet follows almost without a break. Again, unison string figures in ostinato style dominate, and the second strain of the dance finds strings and bassoons in simple canon, while the trio section features ominous trills in cellos and basses, rising chromatically, suggesting the croaking of frogs.

The finale opens with a sorrowful slow introduction, for violins, marked Adagio, and representing the pitiable plight of the Lycians, now turned into amphibians. A cadence point announces a brusque new theme which sounds instantly like a fugue subject and soon becomes embroiled in argumentative full counterpoint. Again, rushing unison passagework illustrates the pond now filled to its banks by hordes of loudly complaining frogs. A further somber and reflective interlude gives way to a reprise of the severe opening ideas, but the work closes on an unusually impressionistic note, following an extended coda in which a solo horn plays softly repeated notes supported by a filigree texture in the violins, before the work closes on a touchingly elegiac note.



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