Ruth Leon recommends…Mozart’s Prague – Australian Haydn Ensemble
Ruth Leon recommendsMozart’s Prague – Australian Haydn Ensemble
Click here for tickets: $24 AUD
December 18 and thereafter for 72 hours, Australian time
You have to pedal fast if you want to catch this one. It’s only available until Wednesday. It looks like it might well be worth it. It’s the Australian Haydn Ensemble livestreamed from City Recital Hall in Sydney.
I particularly like the AHE’s programme notes which are very informative:
“AHE presents an orchestral programme featuring Mozart’s Prague Symphony, his stunning Piano Concerto No. 21, ‘Elvira Madigan’, and Haydn’s Symphony No. 38.
Mozart’s life was tragically cut short in 1791 at the tender age of just 35. In stark contrast, this was the same year that Haydn travelled to London, where he was viewed as a celebrity with his performances drawing huge crowds, and rose to the peak of his fame. Meanwhile, Mozart died in relative poverty in Vienna, a poignant juxtaposition of the lives of the two men. One wonders what Mozart would have achieved had he lived as long as Haydn.
This final programme for 2021 brings together one of Mozart’s most loved late piano concertos No. 21, made famous by the film Elvira Madigan, with his beautiful Prague Symphony and a powerful C minor symphony of Haydn.
The Prague Symphony, composed in late 1785, was premiered in Prague on Mozart’s first visit, from which came the work’s nickname.
The programme opens with Haydn’s powerful C minor Symphony No. 95 completed in 1791, the tragic year of Mozart’s death and during Haydn’s first visit to London. During that trip Haydn composed his set of twelve famous London Symphonies, of which this is the fourth. It is the only symphony of the set that the composer wrote in a minor key and without a slow introduction. The dramatic opening of the work in the powerful key of C minor sets the tone for a dramatic program. no 95.”
An Australian ensemble playing a Prague symphony WHERE!? Why not just have it in outer space with the Queen, cins would I state quite evo-quivicably and honestly that I had sex with Sergei Prokofief in a space ship, that would ALSO land me in an asylum!
This is just the sort of program note I detest reading. It’s a prime example of Marketing Speak, which is what orchestras are told to write these days. An orchestra I know hired marketing consultants at considerable expense to revamp their promo materials, and the advice boiled down to “put an adjective before every work and if possible before every noun”. Here we have a last line that reads “The dramatic opening of the work in the powerful key of C minor sets the tone for a dramatic program.”