Salzburg Mozart Week 2023: From child prodigy to great master | News and criticism | BR CLASSIC
Salzburg Mozart Week 2023
From child prodigy to great master
01/23/2023 by BR-CLASSIC
The genius Mozart is the focus of this year’s Mozart Week. Intendant Rolando Villazón has placed early pieces and late masterpieces side by side in the program, from the piano concerto to the opera “Don Giovanni”. The eleven-day festival in Salzburg starts on Thursday.
Image source: picture-alliance/dpa
The Mozart Week could not take place twice as planned due to the pandemic. “Our hearts were broken,” recalls director Rolando Villazón. He is all the more euphoric that his festival can take place again on a grand scale. For eleven days, the program focuses on the genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Mozart’s goal was always to write good music.
Rolando Villazón, director of the Salzburg Mozart Week
“Mozart had an incredible talent,” enthuses Villazón in an interview with BR-KLASSK. “His early compositions sound fresh and spontaneous. His goal was always to write good music. In doing so, he learned from the old masters, such as Handel and Bach. And with these compositional rules, Mozart invented a new musical language.”
Mozart Week 2023: early compositions and late masterpieces
Self-confessed Mozart fan: the tenor Rolando Villazón, artistic director of the Mozart Week in Salzburg | Image source: Teatro alla Scala
In order to show the way from the early genius to the master of classical music, Villazón juxtaposes Mozart’s early and late works in the program. Among other things, the very first and the last three of his symphonies can be heard. In addition, early and late opera arias can be heard, all of his violin concertos, compositions for piano, chamber music, his Requiem and the concertante, semi-staged opera “Don Giovanni”. With this opera in particular, Villazón knows very clearly: “Mozart is a master of incredibly deep emotions. Within a second he can completely change the atmosphere with three chords.”
Mozart is a master of incredibly deep emotions.
Rolando Villazon
Concerts with Martha Argerich, Renaud Capucon and Daniel Ottensamer
Rolando Villazón is looking forward to outstanding artists who will musically shape the Mozart Week 2023 with him. The pianist Martha Argerich and Maria Joao Pires play together with the Vienna Philharmonic. The clarinettist Daniel Ottensamer, the violinist Renaud Capucon and the pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout will be guests.
Program of the Mozart Week 2023
An overview of all Mozart Week events from January 26 to February 6, 2023 in Salzburg you’ll find here.
Rolando Villazón will also be on the stage at Mozart Week: on Mozart’s birthday, January 27, he will appear in a “Serenata Mexicana”. In addition to the extensive music program, there are discussions about Mozart, a film program, children’s theater and a celebration of the first decade of the Mozart Children’s Orchestra.
Broadcast: “Allegro” on January 24, 2023 from 6:05 a.m. on BR-KLASSIK