2 minute read
Overture
Pre-Concert Conversations
Richard Egarr joins Alexandra Amati, Ph.D. 45 minutes before each concert for an engaging conversation about the program. Dr. Amati is an Italian musicologist specializing in the Italian Renaissance, Italian opera, and Feminist criticism. She is Professor of Music at the University of San Francisco, and is now working on a book about the presentation and treatment of women in opera.
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Performance at a Glance
Peak Mozart
In the year 1786, Mozart was on a roll—even by his inspired standards. The composer had been blessed with a perfect alignment of circumstances, a rare occurrence in Mozart’s short life. The year before, the composer had settled into a large new apartment in Vienna at Domgasse 5, for which he purchased a brand new piano—the first such instrument he owned himself for domestic use. His music was proving increasingly commercially successful, and with good reason. In 1786 the Viennese enjoyed Mozart’s most enduring opera, The Marriage of Figaro. That score was followed by his most fascinating piano concerto, No 24 in C minor. As if to reinforce the point, at the very end of the year he wrote the curiosity that is ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te?’—half opera, half piano concerto. Mozart was settled, appreciated, and was more determined Egarr than ever to find ways of satisfying the public’s taste while stretching the boundaries of his expressive capabilities. His works from the period dig deeper and deeper below surface entertainment to explore the human condition as he saw it. They sought ever more fluent means of reflecting on what it is to live, love and laugh. When Mozart’s creative adventurousness stretched beyond the taste of the conservative Viennese, Prague beckoned. The first half of tonight’s concert features some of the composer’s most inspired music for the Austrian capital written in 1786. The second half includes his symphony for Prague written in the final days of that year, and a selfcontained aria penned in the city itself the following year. 12 PHILHARMONIA BAROQUE ORCHESTRA & CHORALE
FEB 10–13
Elizabeth Watts Richard Egarr
Mozart the Radical
MOZART Concerto for Fortepiano No. 24 in C minor, K. 491 MOZART “Ch’io mi scordi di te? … Non temer, amato bene,” K. 505
MOZART “Bella mia fiamma, addio,” K. 528 MOZART Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504, Prague
Richard Egarr, conductor and fortepiano Elizabeth Watts, soprano
