6. Classical Music on Sunday

Once Mozart, twice Mozart? – No, we’d like to present Mozart three times over in this concert programme. At the heart of this programme is the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The child prodigy from Salzburg has become one of the most frequently performed composers to this day. His Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola will be performed by our »Artist in Residence« Amihai Grosz, together with his colleague Noah Bendix-Balgley, Principal Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, and the BSOF. The close rapport between the two musicians, forged through years of playing together in the orchestra, will also be evident here in their interpretation of the solo parts.

Mozart’s works are framed by those of the two composers Joseph Martin Kraus and Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga. Kraus, who hailed from Lower Franconia, was above all a significant composer of symphonies. From 1778, he was Court Kapellmeister and Director of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm. Owing to his musical achievements, his career in Sweden and, above all, the fact that his dates of birth and death were almost identical to those of Mozart – he outlived him by just one year – Kraus was dubbed the ‘Swedish Mozart’.

Much like Kraus, the Spanish violinist and composer Arriaga is frequently described as a ‘Spanish Mozart’. Born exactly 50 years to the day after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Arriaga was likewise a musical child prodigy. At the age of just fifteen, he was certified by the Paris Conservatoire as having successfully completed his studies. His musical output comprises overtures, cantatas and string quartets, alongside just one symphony. However, much like Mozart, the prodigy’s great potential did not have a whole lifetime in which to unfold. Arriaga died at the age of just under 20, making him the composer with the shortest life span in this ‘Mozartian’ triumvirate, all of whom met with an early death.