Happy Birthday Wolfgang

[richardfinegold]

Detroit, January 27, 2017
Mozart was 216 today, and we are in Detroit visiting family and friends. We heard Leonard Slatkin conduct the DSO, in the midst of their three week Mozart fest, inLa Clemenza de Tito Overure; the Concerone for 2 Violins and Orchestra, K. 190; the Horn Concero 3 and the Clarinet Concerto. Soloists were all drawn from the Orchestra. Free coffee and birthday cake.
The concert was delightful. Orchestra Hall in Detroit is a beautiful venue with superb acoustics.
The Concertone is a strange duck of a piece. The oboist has all the best parts. Brahms must have liked that idea when he wrote his VC

[ahinton]

Detroit, January 27, 2017
Mozart was 216 today, and we are in Detroit visiting family and friends. We heard Leonard Slatkin conduct the DSO, in the midst of their three week Mozart fest, inLa Clemenza de Tito Overure; the Concerone for 2 Violins and Orchestra, K. 190; the Horn Concero 3 and the Clarinet Concerto. Soloists were all drawn from the Orchestra. Free coffee and birthday cake.
The concert was delightful. Orchestra Hall in Detroit is a beautiful venue with superb acoustics.
The Concertone is a strange duck of a piece. The oboist has all the best parts. Brahms must have liked that idea when he wrote his VC

John Ogdon would have been 80 yesterday, too.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

261, rfg - lovely way to celebrate

[french frank]

Letter from Mozart to his father, Mannheim, 31 October 1777, signed:
Joannes*** Chrisostomus Sigismundus** Wolfgang* Gottlieb Mozart

* Today is my name-day!
** That is my confirmation name!
*** January 27th is my birthday!

Good to see the recent enthusiasm for WAM on the recent Complete Edition thread. Even my brother - a Beethoven fan who offloaded on me all his late father-in-law's Mozart LPs a few years ago - bought the Complete Edition (and asked for John Suchet's new book about Mozart for Christmas ). A convert!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Good to see the recent enthusiasm for WAM on the recent Complete Edition thread. Even my brother - a Beethoven fan who offloaded on me all his late father-in-law's Mozart LPs a few years ago - bought the Complete Edition (and asked for John Suchet's new book about Mozart for Christmas ). A convert!

That box has been a life-changer (already) for me - a longtime Mozza fan - too; so much Music I'd never heard before (the Serenades, Concert Arias, Piano Trios, the Sacred Music ... ) or had neglected (the S4tets in particular). It's become the "soundtrack" of 2017 for me (the g major Piano Trio at the moment), and proving quite expensive - what I saved in getting the box for £175, I'm making up in the number of scores I've been buying And accompanied by Maynard Solomon's biography, to be followed by Georg Knepler's study.

[french frank]

And accompanied by Maynard Solomon's biography, to be followed by Georg Knepler's study.

(I borrowed it from the library - I have Knepler's). A fascinating 'delve' at £14.95 (then) is Otto Erich Deutsch's Mozart: A Documentary Biography which brings together some fascinating - oops, I mean very interesting - contemporary documents and disposes of the tiresome claim that Mozart was really baptised 'Theophilus' (the name that appears in the baptismal register). Since the register is written in Latin, the name Gottlieb is translated into the Latin form Theophilus by the priest/clerk; and his godfather Johann Gottlieb Pergmayr appears as Joannes Theophilus Pergmayr. Leopold himself announces the name as 'Joannes Chrisostomos Wolfgang Gottlieb'. Amadeus/Amadeo seems to have been a later whim - if I remember when young Mozart was in Italy.

I just needed to get that off my chest.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

More frequently "Amadé" - as in the Knepler title - than "Amadeus", which he only used on a couple of occasions, in a "mock-pomposo" manner to his friends/family (as one might address oneself in such circumstances as "french von frank", perhaps).

Further down my reading list is Braunbehrens' Mozart in Vienna (which I remember was very useful in debunking the idea that Mozart died "in poverty") - then the two Robbins Landon books - and then the complete Mozart Family Letters, which I bought (all three volumes) from a very good second-hand bookshop in Aberaeron (£9!) on my last holiday in Wales in 2010, and have only ever (though frequently) "dipped into" since then .

I should get the Deutsch - it's so often cited in every subsequent work on the composer that I feel I must have already read it piecemeal!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The Braunbehrens book is available for 1p (+ P&P, so £2.81 in total)!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Mozart-Vienna-Volkmar-Braunbehrens/023398559X

[cloughie]

261, rfg - lovely way to celebrate

I hope I'm sound that good when I'm 261!

So many wonderful works but has anybody hereabouts their favourite pieces or even performances.

Ten for starters among mine are Notturno K286, Kegelstadt Trio K498, Fl&HpC K299, SC K364, Haffner March & Serenade K249/250, Sym 39, PC19 K459, Div17 K334, P&W Quintet K452, Oboe Qt K370

[JFLL]

Amadeus/Amadeo seems to have been a later whim - if I remember when young Mozart was in Italy.

In a recorded lecture 'Mozart and his Music' (part of it on YouTube), Beecham pronounced Amadeus with the stress on the second syllable - Am-ah-deus. Was this just a Beechamism, tiresome or not according to taste? (He also pronounced Mozart with the stress on the last syllable and with a dz rather than ts - Moh-dzart.) The whole lecture sounds high camp today and, particularly at the beginning, TB sounds eerily like Gerard Hoffnung. But it's quite interesting on the changes of perception towards Mozart in the first half of the 20th century -- a revaluation, of course, we are led to believe was brought about practically single-handedly by Beecham himself!

[french frank]

In a recorded lecture 'Mozart and his Music' (part of it on YouTube), Beecham pronounced Amadeus with the stress on the second syllable - Am-ah-deus. Was this just a Beechamism, tiresome or not according to taste?

Must be a Beechamism - it makes no sense stressed like that: Áma-déus = Theo-philus = Gott-lieb

(He also pronounced Mozart with the stress on the last syllable and with a dz rather than ts - Moh-dzart.)

Why? (Other than a natural articulation after diphthongising Mohoo-)

[Stanley Stewart]

And, yours truly, was also a proud Aquarian to share his 86th birthday, yesterday, with memories of WAM and Holocaust Day - somehow, I KNEW there was a reason why I had the good fortune to make a successful bid for the near half-price offer on the Complete Mozart edition, a few months ago!

[richardfinegold]

And, yours truly, was also a proud Aquarian to share his 86th birthday, yesterday, with memories of WAM and Holocaust Day - somehow, I KNEW there was a reason why I had the good fortune to make a successful bid for the near half-price offer on the Complete Mozart edition, a few months ago!

Happy Birthday, Stanley! Mine as on the 24th; no great Composers to share with but always a nice reason to celebrate a few weeks after the Holiday Hoopla when the Winter doldrums have arrived.
I received the Phillips Brendel Complete Edition recently. I am going to play through the Mozart recordings after I return home