Giovanni Antonini
Dmitry Smirnov Christoph Willibald Gluck
Giovanni Battisti Viotti
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787) was one of the great musical storytellers of the 18th century. His operas combined music and drama so effectively that he became a major inspiration for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Wagner. The ballet music for Don Juan depicts the legendary seducer’s downfall with dark and powerful musical imagery.

Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755–1824) led a wandering but influential career as a violin virtuoso. In the 1780s, he dazzled audiences in Paris before settling in London after the French Revolution. His Violin Concerto No. 17 in D minor is one of 29 violin concertos, expanding the soloist’s role and integrating it more closely with the orchestra—an approach that would inspire Beethoven’s own concertos.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) composed his final three symphonies, Nos. 39 to 41, during the summer of 1788. It remains uncertain whether he ever heard them performed in his lifetime. Symphony No. 41 soon earned the nickname Jupiter Symphony, and Mozart’s longest and most sophisticated symphonic work became an ideal for later composers such as Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner.