Piano Street's Classical Piano News

Today is W.A. Mozart’s 265th birthday and Salzburg and Austria celebrate this with the world premiere of one of his compositions.
At Piano Street we celebrate by releasing the score of the composition, the recently discovered piano piece “Allegro in D K626b/16“.
Download it for free below and celebrate Mozart yourself by playing the piece today!

A hidden treasure

So, how could this manuscript have hidden from public attention? Evidently, after passing from the estate of Mozart’s youngest son into the collection owned by Austrian civil servant and amateur musician Aloys Fuchs, it was mistakenly given away and vanished off the musical map. Owned by an antiquarian book and art dealer in Vienna in the 1880s, the manuscript was brought to auction in 1899. By this time The Köchel catalogue – listing the composer’s works – started mentioning it even though the manuscript itself kept going in and out of auction houses.

In 2018, the ‘unknown’ Allegro was offered for sale to the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation on behalf of the family of its owner, a French-Dutch engineer who had bought the manuscript from a dealer in Paris in the late 1920s. The Foundation’s staff and experts from the USA and Germany confirmed that the unattributed piano piece was undeniably by Mozart.

The Allegro in D major, K. 626b/16 fills the front and back of a single sheet of music paper in oblong format. The handwriting is hasty, but error-free. The undated composition stems in all likelihood from the first months 1773, according to the Mozarteum Foundation; it thus originated either during Mozart’s third journey to Italy or immediately after his return to Salzburg. Peculiarities of style suggest that this three-part dance movement is not an original piano piece, but a keyboard arrangement in Mozart’s own hand of an unknown orchestral work.

Free download!

Download the PDF-score and play the piece today to celebrate Mozart’s 265th birthday!

The World Premiere in Salzburg

A facsimile edition of the Allegro in D, complete with extensive introduction and bibliography, has been published by Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg and pianist Seong-Jin Cho will perform the piece in the official world premiere in Saltzburg on 27 January.

Pianist Seong-Jin Cho is the unique performer in the Great Hall of the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation which is also the opening day of the Foundation’s first virtual Mozartwoche festival. Cho plays a stimulating selection of works by the Great Master, including the Piano Sonata No. 12, the Allegro in C Major and 94 seconds of an Allegro in D-major, performed for the very first time.

“The Allegro in D major K. 626b/16 is a highly attractive and charming piano piece, that adds yet another facet to the affectionate relationship of Mozart to his sister. How wonderful, that we are now able to participate in this relationship after such a long period of time.”
— Dr. Ulrich Leisinger, director of research of the Mozarteum Foundation,

“The rediscovery of this new work by Mozart is a real gift, not just for the Foundation but for friends of the Mozartwoche all over the world! We are very pleased to be able to fulfil the mission of the Foundation in such wonderful style, together with Seong-Jin Cho and Deutsche Grammophon, our aim being to enable people of all ages to find out more about Mozart’s music, life and personality.”
— Dr Johannes Honsig-Erlenburg, President of the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation

“It is a great honour to be invited to give the premiere of a formerly unknown work by Mozart, in the city where he was born and where it may have been written,”
— Seong-Jin Cho, pianist

Resources:

Read more at the press page:
Mozarteum.at

Watch a recording of the official world premiere that will by published here 27 January at 18.00 GMT:
DG YouTube channel

A previously unknown piece by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was performed for the first time on Friday, March 23. The piano piece was most likely composed in 1767 or 1768 when Mozart was just 11 years old. It was found in a 160 page handwritten notebook, thought to be written by Mozart’s father, in an attic in Tyrol, Austria.

The piece is entitled “Allegro molto” by “Del Signore Giovane Wolfgango Mozart” (Italian for “Mr. Wolfgang Mozart Jr.”.) Music expert Hildegard Herrmann-Schneider said only Leopold Mozart used this name when writing down his son’s name.

The four minute, 84-bar passage piece was performed at Mozart’s childhood home in Salzburg, Austria on his original piano by pianist Florian Birsak.

“It’s not just anyone’s piece, there is already a touch of the great Mozart he later became,” said Birsak to BBC. The newly found piece has “a series of components that are found repeatedly in other Mozart piano works,” said the Mozarteum Salzburg Foundation, who hosted the event, in a statement. “Judging by the current level of knowledge, it thus has to be a genuine sonata phrase from Mozart.” This isn’t the first Mozart piece to be discovered recently. In 2009 two pieces were found that are said to have been written by Mozart when he was seven or eight.

Piano score to download and print

La Linea (“The Line”) is an Italian animated series created by the Italian cartoonist Osvaldo Cavandoli. The series consists of 90 episodes which are about 2–3 minutes long each and were originally broadcast in the Italian channel RAI between 1972 – 1991. Over the years the series aired in more than 40 countries around the world. Due to its short duration (usually 2 minutes 30 seconds), it has often been used in many networks as an interstitial program.

Even though the episodes are numbered up to 225, there are, in fact, only 90 La Linea episodes. The Lagostina series had eight (5 min) episodes, the 100 series had 56 (101-156), and the 200 series had 26 (200-225).

The cartoon features a man (known as “Mr. Linea”) drawn as a single outline around his silhouette, walking on an infinite line of which he is a part. The character encounters obstacles and often turns to the cartoonist to draw him a solution, with various degrees of success. One recurring obstacle was an abrupt end of line. The character would often almost fall off the edge into oblivion and get angry with the cartoonist and complain about it. He was voiced by Carlo Bonomi in a mock version of Milanese that resembled gibberish as much as possible, giving the cartoon the possibility to be easily exported without dubbing. The tune played in the background of the series was created by Franco Godi but in this episode we hear Mr. Linea perform Mozart’s Sonata K 545 in C major.

Mozart – Sonata K 545 in C:

2011 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra:

Mozart, Piano Concertos Nos. 23 and 24
Mitsuko Uchida, Cleveland Orchestra (Decca)

Pianist Dame Mitsuko Uchida has just won her first-ever Grammy award. The recording, Mozart: Piano Concertos nos. 23 & 24, was released in the US on September 8, 2009 and is one in a series of recordings of Mozart concertos with Uchida planned on Decca. The Guardian wrote about this recording: “Admirers of Uchida’s fabulously fluent Mozart playing will know what to expect from these accounts; every phrase is elegantly tooled, every texture perfectly weighted … a rapturously beautiful disc.” Mitsuko Uchida has long been one of the world’s premiere interpreters of Mozart’s piano music both in the recording studio and the concert hall. She famously recorded the Mozart Concertos with Jeffrey Tate and the English Chamber Orchestra in the 1980s.

Recently, Uchida has decided to reconsider the works and now records them live with the Cleveland Orchestra in Severence Hall with the pianist also acting as conductor. This new approach in both logistics and style has yielded results which few could have imagined. “Mitsuko Uchida’s Mozart playing here is stunningly sensitive, crystalline, and true. These two concertos have been over-recorded, but this soloist and this great orchestra prove there is still more to say.” (Boston Globe – Record Review)

The next recording in this series, Mozart: Piano Concertos nos. 20 & 27, will also feature the Cleveland Orchestra and Uchida as both conductor and soloist and will be released later this spring.

Uchida said about the award, “I feel very happy about receiving this Grammy Award, especially because it is for the first recording in a series of Mozart concerti with The Cleveland Orchestra. These are people with whom I have a long association, so it gives me particular pleasure.”

Read more:
The 2011 Grammy Award Classical Winners

Here is an example of Uchida playing Mozart from a live concert during Salzburger Festspiele 2006:
W. A. Mozart – Piano concerto No 25 (Uchida, Vienna Philharmonic, Muti)

We celebrate your birthday, Mozart, with a little gift to all your fans, a facsimile of one of your first pieces, Minuet in G, K 1.
Print out and play!!

Download free PDF of Mozart’s Minuet in G, K. 1 (autograph facsimile)

… and a few interesting links:

Mozart’s 255th! 12 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Quotables
“January 27th marks Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 255th birthday, offering a perfect excuse for us to pull out some of our favourite quotes from Wolfie himself and a few well-deserved words from his multitude of admirers”:
http://www.classical963fm.com/blog/mozart-quotes-birthday

Mozart’s Thematic Catalogue – Introduction
This manuscript is Mozart’s record of his compositions in the last seven years of his life, and thus is a uniquely important document.
During this period, from February 1784 until December 1791, he composed many of his best-known works, including his five mature operas, several of his most beautiful piano sonatas, and his last three great symphonies, as well as several famous lesser works.
Mozart organised the entries in the catalogue in the order in which they were completed. On the left-hand page he entered five compositions, each with its date, title, and often its instrumentation.
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/mozart/accessible/introduction.html

Did you listen to Mozart today? Please share your favourite Mozart links, a greeting or your thoughs about Mozart’s music by posting a comment here or on our Facebook page!