Seong-Jin Cho to premiere unheard Mozart work at Mozartwoche Festival
Seong-Jin Cho will perform an unheard Mozart piece to celebrate the composer’s 265th birthday (Photo Credit: Christoph Köstlin)
Unheard Mozart piano piece performed to mark composer’s 265th birthday
By Rosie Pentreath
Classic FM
January 22, 2021
A world premiere of a piece by Mozart doesn’t happen every day. But the unearthing of a new manuscript promises the treat of brand new Mozart in 2021.
A newly discovered piano piece by Mozart is due to be performed at Salzburg’s Mozarteum Foundation, to mark the composer’s 265th birthday this year.
Pianist Seong-Jin Cho will give the world premiere performance of Mozart’s ‘Allegro in D’ – which was unearthed in 2018 – at the start of 2021 Mozartwoche Festival this month. The concert will be hosted by Rolando Villazón, artistic director of the festival (pictured below).
Cho’s performance will be streamed on Deutsche Grammophon’s online DG Stage platform, as part of a full piano and lecture recital which will include some other works by the great composer.
How did Mozart’s unknown piano piece go missing?
This long-abandoned Allegro has had quite the journey.
The manuscript, which features notation in Mozart’s hand on both sides, is thought to date from 1773. Instead of being preserved and passed on for enjoyment by the masses through history, like most of Mozart’s works, it seems to have got lost along the way.
Somehow, after passing from the estate of the composer’s youngest son into the collection owned by Austrian civil servant and amateur musician Aloys Fuchs, it was given away – maybe by mistake – and fell off the musical map.
It was owned by an antiquarian book and art dealer in Vienna in the 1880s, and brought to auction by 1899. Maybe they didn’t quite realise the Mozart magic they had. But the Köchel catalogue, which lists the composer’s works, started mentioning it around this time, even though the manuscript itself kept flying in and out of auction houses.
Fast forward around 90 years, and in 2018 the worn manuscript finally made the music community sit up as it should – because it was offered for sale to the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation by the family of the French-Dutch engineer who’d purchased it from a dealer in Paris way back in the late 1920s.
The Foundation’s staff soon confirmed that the unattributed piano piece was undeniably Mozartian, and it’s now safe and sound, and ready for its time in the spotlight. It will be published on the same day as the world premiere.
“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,” pianist Seong-Jin Cho said.
“I’m delighted that, thanks to DG Stage among others, many people from around the world will be able to hear this wonderful piece for the first time during my Mozartwoche recital.”
The performance will be accompanied by a recording of the work, released online by Cho on the same day.
To read the full article, click here.
Watch World Premiere Of Newly Discovered Mozart Piano Piece
By Sharon Kelly
Universal Music Group
January 25, 2021
The world premiere of Mozart’s ‘Allegro in D’ will be performed by Seong-Jin Cho to celebrate the composer’s 265th birthday on DG Stage.
A recently discovered Mozart piano piece will be performed by Seong-Jin Cho at Salzburg’s Mozarteum Foundation, and open the 2021 Mozartwoche Festival, to celebrate the composer’s 265th birthday. The world premiere of Mozart’s Allegro in D will be streamed (excluding Austria and Korea), as part of a full piano and lecture recital including other works by Mozart, on Deutsche Grammophon’s online platform DG Stage on 27 January 2021 at 6pm (CET). Seong-Jin Cho’s eSingle recording of Mozart’s Allegro in D will be released on 29 January 2021.
“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,” noted Seong-Jin Cho. “I’m delighted that, thanks to DG Stage among others, many people from around the world will be able to hear this wonderful piece for the first time during my Mozartwoche recital. I really hope that many others will also discover its charms by listening to my Deutsche Grammophon eSingle recording.”
“Mozart’s music brings us solace in difficult times”
This year’s planned Mozartwoche was cancelled due to the lockdown but the organisers of the annual festival decided to celebrate Mozart’s 265th birthday with an abbreviated programme specially adapted for online streaming. “The world premiere of the Allegro in D is the icing on the birthday cake for our beloved Mozart,” explained Rolando Villazón, Artistic Director of the Mozartwoche. “I am thrilled it will be presented by the outstanding pianist Seong-Jin Cho, who has such a marvellous feeling for the tender humanity of Mozart’s melodies. Mozart’s music brings us solace in difficult times and is the shining light that lets us look forward to the time when audiences and performers will be able to meet again. For now, we have the chance to share the Mozartwoche experience online and witness a special moment in music history with this world premiere.”
”Once-in a-lifetime performance”
Dr. Clemens Trautmann, President Deutsche Grammophon, observed, “The diligent work of our partners and friends means we have the chance to hear an incredibly rare Mozart world premiere. Rolando Villazón and the Mozarteum Foundation deserve our special thanks, and we congratulate Seong-Jin Cho on this once-in a-lifetime performance. In close collaboration with the Mozarteum Foundation, Unitel and many additional media outlets as well as our audio streaming partners, Deutsche Grammophon is proud to connect audiences worldwide and celebrate Mozart’s genius in a genuinely historic moment.”
The Allegro in D probably dates from early 1773
The Allegro in D K626b/16, preserved on both sides of a single manuscript sheet in Mozart’s hand, probably dates from early 1773, and was completed towards the end of its seventeen-year-old composer’s third tour of Italy or soon after his return home to Salzburg. After being passed from the estate of the composer’s youngest son into the collection of Austrian civil servant and amateur musician Aloys Fuchs the score was, perhaps mistakenly, given away. It was owned in the late 1800s by an antiquarian book and art dealer in Vienna and brought to auction in 1899. The score was noted in Köchel’s catalogue of the composer’s works but escaped scholarly scrutiny.
In 2018 the “unknown” Allegro was offered for sale to the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation by the family of a French-Dutch engineer who had bought the manuscript from a dealer in Paris in the late 1920s. The Foundation’s staff confirmed that the piano piece was by Mozart and Allegro in D will be published on the same day as the world premiere on 27 January 2021.
Watch the world premiere of Mozart’s Allegro in D performed by Seong-Jin Cho on 27 January 2021 at 6pm (CET) streamed (excluding Austria and Korea) on DG Stage.
To read the full article, click here.