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Wednesday 5 October 2016

PREVIEW: Mozart and Friends with Lucía Caruso


As well as a thrilling set of variations, Folía, for piano, Portuguese guitar, and orchestra – written with her husband, guitarist Pedro H da Silva (above) – Argentine-born pianist and composer Lucía Caruso will be performing Mozart’s intriguing Piano Concerto no.13 in C major (K415) three times with the orchestra this month:

The inestimable Frances Wilson – otherwise known as ‘The Cross-Eyed Pianist’ – caught up with Lucía ahead of these concerts; and the resulting in-depth and thoughtful interview can be read on her website, as part of her addictive Meet the Artist… series.

Thank you, therefore, to Frances for her hard work; and to Lucía for her beautifully detailed responses.

Tuesday 4 October 2016

Mozart and Friends with Lucía Caruso:
Themes and variations

11 October 2016: Stratford ArtsHouse
12 October 2016: Town Hall, Birmingham

  • Antonio Salieri – Sinfonia in D major ‘Il giorno onomastico’
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Piano Concerto no13 in C major, K415
  • Lucía Caruso and Pedro H da Silva (orchestrated by Pedro H da Silva) – Folía
  • Joseph Haydn – Symphony no92 ‘Oxford’ in G major, Hob I:92

Ignore everything you may have gleaned about Antonio Salieri – especially from that film! With only five-and-a-half years difference in age, it is no surprise that he and ‘Amadeus’ were rivals for many of the leading musical jobs on offer at the time. However, it is extremely unlikely that homicide was the end result! Indeed, in later life, these two great musicians were, if not friends, peers who worked together, and had a great deal of respect for each other. Likewise, Mozart and Haydn – who, when the former died, called the younger man “irreplaceable” – their friendship probably being established the year after today’s concerto was completed: when Mozart was in his late twenties; Haydn, his early fifties. Effectively, then – apart from the tremendous bonus which follows the interval (although it not only travels through this period, but echoes Salieri’s undoubted masterpiece: twenty-six incredibly virtuosic, ingenious orchestral variations on the very same theme, from 1815) – today’s concert captures the world of three pre-eminent composers who not only knew and influenced each other, but also dominated the musical scene of their age: with Mozart at its Viennese core.

If the opening symphony and the subsequent concerto are not regularly performed (relative to the fame of their creators; and the 13th is certainly not one of the most famous of Mozart’s 23 piano concertos), then the opposite is true of Haydn’s 92nd symphony – although, as Michael Kennedy once said, this was “composed in 1788 with no thought of Oxford”! However, it is a pocket-sized treasure: beautifully expressing that Austrian zeitgeist; as well as encapsulating and building on the composer’s previous orchestral triumphs… – immediately before he entered the glorious Indian summer of his twelve London symphonies.

What all four works here have in common then are not just bonds of friendship (an OOTS trademark), but excitement, contrasted with lyricism of the highest, most penetrating order – the Salieri thrilling in its exploration of orchestral technique and timbre (as well as its riveting beginning, luxurious middle, and gravity-defying end); Mozart’s concerto mesmerizing in its almost unceasing, meandering and vaulting virtuosity; Lucía and Pedro’s Folía electrifying with both mastery of musical evolution and execution; and finally, Haydn, yet again stretching the bounds of symphonic form: with invention, intelligence and the most exhilarating finale!