Unraveling Musical Myths will be returning soon with all new content and added features.
In the interim, should you have missed the live-streamed premiere of Mozart's Allegro in D earlier today from the Great Hall of the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation, a video of the 94-second performance is available on Deutsche Grammophon's YouTube page and can be seen below.
In the interim, should you have missed the live-streamed premiere of Mozart's Allegro in D earlier today from the Great Hall of the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation, a video of the 94-second performance is available on Deutsche Grammophon's YouTube page and can be seen below.
Performed by South Korean pianist and first prize recipient of the 2015 Chopin International Competition in Warsaw, Seong-Jin Cho, the short piece - composed by a teenaged Mozart, then just 17 - marked the opening of Salzburg's annual Mozartwoche festival, which has been shifted from a series of live concerts and festivities to a virtual format due to the ongoing pandemic. Today also marks the 265th observation of the composer's birth, born at 8:00 in the evening of January 27, 1756 in the then-ecclesiastic principality of Salzburg.
From the Deutsche Grammophon website:
"The Allegro in D K626b/16, preserved on both sides of a single manuscript sheet in Mozart’s hand, probably dates from early 1773, completed towards the end of its seventeen-year-old composer’s third tour of Italy or soon after his return home to Salzburg. The score appears to have passed from the estate of the composer’s youngest son into the collection of Austrian civil servant and amateur musician Aloys Fuchs and then been given away soon after, perhaps by mistake. Owned in the late 1800s by an antiquarian book and art dealer in Vienna, it was brought to auction following his death in 1899. Its existence was noted in the third and subsequent editions of Köchel’s catalogue of the composer’s works, but the work escaped scholarly scrutiny despite having been presented at auction several times between 1900 and 1928."
Watch the premiere below (extended introduction in German and English, closed captioning available. Performance begins at 2:55):
