an unexpected concert
Jun. 4th, 2006 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI was just about to leave the public library downtown when the car radio announced an attractive little concert: a free performance of Mozart's Gran Partita, K.361, the wind serenade whose slow movement Salieri rhapsodizes over in Amadeus. Though the announcement was phrased in general terms ("Sunday at 3 pm"), it dawned on me that this was ... half an hour from now! And it was in the California Theatre, a few blocks away.
I hastily re-parked the car and walked over, where I found a small scattered audience listening to Daniel Leeson, a Mozart scholar who'd be playing basset horn in the performance, give a racounteuring account of the history of the manuscript, which eventually found its way to the Library of Congress in 1942. Copies of the printed facsimile edition were placed on stands for the audience to admire.
For it turned out that this concert was part of a traveling exhibition arranged by LC to celebrate the Mozart anniversary year. After the performance there was a brief presentation by the Librarian himself, James Billington, to the man whose foundation had funded the concert, David Packard the younger, both of whom had been hiding in the audience.
I hope they enjoyed the show. Conducted by George Cleve, to whose Midsummer Mozart festival this formed a kind of prelude, the musicians gave a bright, crisp performance particularly delectable in the tight, sizzling finale. I love wind serenades (or, more accurately, serenades with a lot of winds in them, for even the Gran Partita has a contrabass hiding at the bottom - some inaccurate sources have this as contrabassoon, but a contrabassoon can't play pizzicato as the score indicates, so that settles that) - Dvorak's, Brahms's, even Richard Strauss's, but they're all consciously modeled on this one of Mozart's.
I hastily re-parked the car and walked over, where I found a small scattered audience listening to Daniel Leeson, a Mozart scholar who'd be playing basset horn in the performance, give a racounteuring account of the history of the manuscript, which eventually found its way to the Library of Congress in 1942. Copies of the printed facsimile edition were placed on stands for the audience to admire.
For it turned out that this concert was part of a traveling exhibition arranged by LC to celebrate the Mozart anniversary year. After the performance there was a brief presentation by the Librarian himself, James Billington, to the man whose foundation had funded the concert, David Packard the younger, both of whom had been hiding in the audience.
I hope they enjoyed the show. Conducted by George Cleve, to whose Midsummer Mozart festival this formed a kind of prelude, the musicians gave a bright, crisp performance particularly delectable in the tight, sizzling finale. I love wind serenades (or, more accurately, serenades with a lot of winds in them, for even the Gran Partita has a contrabass hiding at the bottom - some inaccurate sources have this as contrabassoon, but a contrabassoon can't play pizzicato as the score indicates, so that settles that) - Dvorak's, Brahms's, even Richard Strauss's, but they're all consciously modeled on this one of Mozart's.
