Hi everyone,
Greetings from Vienna. To celebrate the 250th year of Mozart's birth we have a number events planned throughout the upcoming season. The chamber orchestra will devote the fall concerts to presenting four Mozart concerti (K. 453, K. 414, K. 271 and K. 456) with four students of Malcolm Bilson. And K. 271 will be played again with Malcolm Bilson at Smith College. We will finish the fall semester with a concert in Rochester, NY with all four concerti. Symphony will open the fall semester with Mozart's Magic Flute overture. CCO will finish the year with guest artists Roberto Diaz (of the Philadelphia orchestra and now the dean of the Curtis school of music) and Gabriela Diaz(his younger sister, and also a fantastic free lance violinist in Boston) in a performance of Sinfonia Concertante. (a side note- I first met Gabriela when I heard her heart pounding performance of the Ligeti's violin concerto).
Here is an essay by one of my favorite writers on new music about an experience of taking three months to listen to Mozart's entire output on his ipod.
In my favorite passage from his essay, Mr. Ross contemplates what critics might say if Mozart had lived on to old age;
"Mozart was still a young man, discovering what he could do. In the unimaginable alternate universe in which he lived to the age of seventy, an anniversary-year essay might have contained a sentence such as this: “Opera houses focus on the great works of Mozart’s maturity—‘The Tempest,’ ‘Hamlet,’ the two-part ‘Faust’—but it would be a good thing if we occasionally heard that flawed yet lively work of his youth, ‘Don Giovanni.’ ”
And about K. 271 which the CCO will play;
"...most strikingly, the Piano Concerto No. 9, which is a three-act instrumental opera of energetic play, melancholy withdrawal, and happy return."
Enjoy
p.s. picture is the quite touristy statue in the Volksgarten in Vienna I took a few days ago.
