Piano Street's Classical Piano Blog

The International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg has announced it has discovered two previously unknown compositions written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

“The Department of Research at the International Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg has identified two works, which have long been in the possession of the Foundation, as compositions of the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,” the foundation said in a recent statement, without giving any more details.

The two pieces for piano are to presented to the press on August 2. They will be performed by clavichordist Florian Birsak on Mozart’s own fortepiano at the family’s old Salzburg residence.

This latest score is not the only one to have resurfaced in recent years however. Last September, a library in Nantes, in western France, unveiled a hitherto unknown music score by Mozart that had lain in its archive undiscovered for over a century. It was authenticated by the Mozarteum.

In 2006, a year filled with celebrations for the 250th anniversary of Austria’s favourite son, another piano score extremely likely to be the work of young Wolfgang Amadeus was discovered in Salzburg.

In May of last year, experts also identified three mystery musical scores discovered at Poland’s historic Jasna Gora Roman Catholic monastery in southern Poland, as possible Mozart creations.

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Added 20 August 2009:

From NTDTV on August 03, 2009:

Listen to one of the two new pieces performed on harpsichord by Florian Birsak in Salzburg, August 2009:

/patrick

“Mitsuko Uchido is one of perhaps just a handful of classical pianists whose work can justifiably be mentioned alongside the great players of the past – Rachmaninov, Schnabel, Cortot, Michelangeli.” (ABC Radio National, Australia)

This season, Uchida is artist-in-residence with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Her residency includes performances of Schumann’s Piano Concerto with Sir Simon Rattle, and a series of four chamber music concerts. She is also artist-in-residence at the Konzerthaus Vienna and at the Salzburg Mozartwoche.
Here you can enjoy an excerpt from the third movement of the mentioned Schumann a minor Piano Concerto performance as of February 13, 2009:

Excerpt third movement:

Interview with Uchida on the Schumann concerto:

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Born in Atami, a seaside town close to Tokyo, Japan, Uchida moved to Vienna, Austria when she was twelve years old with her diplomat parents after her father was named the Japanese ambassador to Austria. She enrolled at the Vienna Academy of Music to study with Richard Hauser, and later Wilhelm Kempff and Stefan Askenase, and remained in Vienna to study after her father was transferred back to Japan after five years. She gave her first Viennese recital at the age of 14 at the Vienna Musikverein.

In 1969 she won the first prize in the Beethoven Competition in Vienna and in 1970 the second prize in the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition. Then, in 1975, she won second prize in the Leeds Piano Competition. From 2002 to 2007 she served as artist-in-residence for the Cleveland Orchestra, where she led performances of all of Mozart’s solo piano concertos.

She is an acclaimed interpreter of the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy and Schoenberg. She has recorded all of Mozart’s piano sonatas (a project that won the Gramophone Award), and concerti, the latter with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Jeffrey Tate. She is further noted for her recordings of Beethoven’s complete piano concerti with Kurt Sanderling conducting, Beethoven’s late piano sonatas, and a Schubert piano cycle. Her recording of the Debussy Études won another Gramophone Award, and so did her recording of the Schoenberg piano concerto. In April 2008, BBC Music Magazine presented her its Instrumentalist of the Year and Disc of the Year award. She is distinguished as an interpreter of the works of the Second Viennese School (read the interview from The Guardian below).

She is an Artistic Director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival, along with fellow pianist Richard Goode. She is also a trustee of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust, an organization established to help young artists develop and sustain international careers. Uchida is a recipient of the 1986 Suntory Music Award.

Interview from The Guardian, February 2006:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/feb/25/classicalmusicandopera.mozart

/patrick

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet took the Instrumental Award at this year’s BBC Music Awards for the third (out of four) volume of his complete Debussy piano music series on the Chandos label.

What makes this disc special is not only Bavouzet’s exceptional playing, but the intelligent programming. From what could easily have sounded a “bits and pieces” micellany, Bavouzet has created a wide-ranging programme which both encapsulates Debussy’s entire work, and at the same time has a sense of a coherent progression.

‘We have a lot to learn from Debussy,’ writes Bavouzet. ‘Through the sophisticated sounds he seeks to create and the simplicity of his textures by which he builds, in just a few phrases and harmonies, a whole world of poetry, but also through writing which always reveals a highly contrapuntal way of thinking, Debussy compels us to listen to his music in a very private, intense and nearly religious manner.

Interview for BBC Music Magazine

/patrick