Mozart Fest

[subcontrabass]

I see that the Guardian poll ended up in an almost dead heat.

[Suffolkcoastal]

I expect RW and his cronies were up until the poll closed trying to make sure that the yes's were at least equal. I expect CFM can't wait for the increase in listerner numbers for the first 12 days of 2011!

[subcontrabass]

There do not seem to be any figures for the total number of votes.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Sounds a bit like a Zimbabwe (or Florida) election.

[antongould]

The 3 of us who listen to Breakfast or more exactly the 2 of us who have time, albeit a little, for "polls" will know the Great Man's great Requiem was the listeners No. 1. Would anyone wish to comment? Or are we having no part of it?

[aeolium]

Well, I don't listen to Breakfast or have any time for polls, but surely some people are aware that much of the Requiem (in the version most commonly heard) was not even written by Mozart. I find it difficult to listen to this work because of the disappointing second half after the wonderful opening movements. I'd almost rather have it played as an uncompleted fragment.

[antongould]

To be fair Sara did point out the dual composition as well as the (hooded?) stranger. But is it clearly documented and accepted who wrote what? Even I, without the "ear" of others on these boards, sense a drop in "quality"!

[salymap]

I mustn't put ideas into anybody's head but how long before one of our intrepid arrangers finds yet another Mozart work, PC or symphony half finished and ready for his 'talents'. Or is it already on the way? Salieri mark 2.

[Bryn]

To be fair Sara did point out the dual composition as well as the (hooded?) stranger. But is it clearly documented and accepted who wrote what? Even I, without the "ear" of others on these boards, sense a drop in "quality"!

"dual composition"? You are too kind to Süssmayr. What about the initial work of Eybler and Freystädtler which Süssmayr happily drew on without properly crediting them?

[Roehre]

I mustn't put ideas into anybody's head but how long before one of our intrepid arrangers finds yet another Mozart work, PC or symphony half finished and ready for his 'talents'. Or is it already on the way? Salieri mark 2.

Monday Jan 3rd the "premiere" of a piano concerto mvt in G (from Nannerl's sketchbook) is broadcast, in Levin's arrangement (not by chance the performer that night I guess) (information taken from the BBC MM which I found in my mail box this morning)

[Eudaimonia]

Here's a little more information on the reasoning behind the series:

Celebrating the genius of Mozart
BBC Radio 3 is about to broadcast every note the Austrian composer wrote. Ivan Hewett asks Radio 3 controller Roger Wright about the Mozart tidal wave to come.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8230247/Celebrating-the-genius-of-Mozart.html

[...] Why do it? Because, says Roger Wright, controller of Radio 3, it brings an oasis of focus and calm to a station that normally has to reflect the busy plurality of cultural life, which now and again is a good thing.

But is Mozart a good choice? Isn’t there an awful lot of music from the early years that is pretty but not much more? “Well, you might say that,” says Wright, “but, as always with these complete composer portraits that Radio 3 does from time to time, we put our editorial stamp on the music. We don’t bundle like with like: we mix early music with late, and we do each composer in a different way.

“The really fascinating thing is how these projects involve the team in difficult choices about performance. Do we want an authentic early-music sound or the more familiar sound of modern instruments?” The answer, as you might expect, is a statesmanlike compromise between the two. [...]

[french frank]

Here's a little more information on the reasoning behind the series:

Doesn't quite explain this, though, does it?

[Bryn]

Doesn't quite explain this, though, does it?

Oh I think the Mozart fest is just an example of adaptive preference formation on Roger Wright's part reducing his cognitive dissonance regarding that composers output.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

from that Torygraph piece:

says Eisen. “There’s this idea that Mozart picks up the baton from Bach and Handel. But that couldn’t be true, because the circumstances just weren’t right. No one bothered with Bach in Salzburg or Vienna: he was too old-fashioned, and, besides, who would want to listen to his Lutheran chorales in Catholic Austria? No, Mozart learned from the stuff that he heard in Salzburg and on his travels, which was basically Italian.”

really? no lunnun then ....and JC never mind pa?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

K as in honour

it's just an ironic spectacle innit, a detour to jolt our middle aged commodity fetishism and stirrup the commercial flow of packaged music on CFM innit?

is RW a situationist in the closet .... or just a circus proprietor striving to win notice and favour at the New Court .... ?

or a conceptualist event stager ..... like the kids at US Uni stations who broadcast weirdness for hours ....