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Lincoln’s Center Mostly Mozart Festival
A four-week celebration of the great composer
Photo: emersonkent.com
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You may have heard of this Mozart guy. Pretty famous composer. Even has a movie based on his life. And now, for the 44th time, Lincoln Center presents “Mostly Mozart,” a four week tribute to the greatest composer that ever lived.
The festival, which runs from July 27-August 21, contains more than 35 events, including concerts, dance, pre-concert recitals, late-night performances and lectures, and is spread across five Lincoln Center venues. Composer Louis Langrée will conduct the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra in 10 concerts, with works by Chopin, Schumann, Bach, Gluck, Saint-Saëns, Barber, Beethoven, Bizet, Mendelssohn, Weber and, yes, that Mozart fellow.
“What makes us most proud of Mostly Mozart as it traverses its fifth decade,” says Artistic Director Jane Moss, “is that its founding spirit of innovation, risk taking, deep musical engagement and passion is alive and well, profoundly nourished and sustained by the genius and heart of Mozart.”
There are too many great events over those four weeks to list here (you should look on the festival’s website), but some highlights include: The six-part “Bach and Polyphonies” from August 13-16; 15 debuts from rising artists, including violinist James Ehnes, pianists David Fray and Peter Jablonski and conductor Pablo Heras-Casado; and the long-awaited return of the Mark Morris Dance Group (August 5-7).
The Mostly Mozart Festival begins tomorrow night with a gala performance by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra under Louis Langrée with pianist Emanuel Ax and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe performing Mozart, Handel, Gluck and Chopin at Avery Fisher Hall.
Five Facts about Mozart
1. Little Mozart made his first public recital at the age of five. When I was five, I learned the difference between a penny and a nickel. At nine, he had composed a symphony; at 12, an entire opera. Luckily, that was the last we heard of that whippersnapper Moz—oh, never mind.
2. Mozart occasionally combined forces to play in a string quartet with Joseph Haydn, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Johann Baptist Vanhal to become the world’s first super group. In Michael Kelly’s Reminiscences, first published in 1826, the singer wrote, “[Composer Stephen] Storace gave a quartet party to his friends. The players were tolerable; not one of them excelled on the instrument he played, but there was a little science among them…I was there, and a greater treat, or a more remarkable one, cannot be imagined.”
3. In 1874, Mozart became a Freemason. Other famous members: William Abbott, Oscar Wilde, George Washington, Mark Twain, Peter Sellers and Paul Revere (the original, not the one from Detroit who sang “Kicks”).
4. As much as Amadeus wants us to believe they were, Mozart and Antonio Salieri weren’t actually rivals. In fact, according to most reports, the two saw one another as colleagues, and Salieri even attended Mozart’s funeral. But history’s more fun when people hate one another, so I’m just going to point out that if you Google “Mozart” there are 33.2 million results; for Salieri, 1.8. Once again, Salieri, you’re behind. Make your move!
5. In an issue of The Annals of Internal Medicine in 2009, Richard H.C. Zegers, MD PhD; Andres Weigl, PhD; and Andrew Steptoe, DSc concluded in their paper “The Death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: An Epidemiologic Perspective” that the 35-year-old Mozart died of a “streptococcal infection leading to an acute nephritic syndrome caused by poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis.” Meaning, strep. Unfair ending to a great life.