Daniel Hope refers to Mozart as “the boss”, the composer whose genius
surpasses all others. “His music is simply incredible,” he observes.
“Mozart has a way of conveying emotion that no other composer can match.
His music has something which is otherworldly, untouchable, almost
unreachable. And yet, he was so very human. If you study his letters in
detail, you discover the kind of person he was – a prodigious talent who
was misunderstood by his father, by his peers, and who did things his
way. He was loved by great composers, hated by others, but never let go
of what he wanted: to become an independent composer. Pulled between the
pillars and posts of his own time, he somehow managed to write some of
the most beautiful music that we have ever heard.”
Journey to Mozart pays tribute to a
composer central to Hope’s musical life and takes listeners on a voyage
through music history. It opens with the “Dance of the Furies” and
“Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from Gluck’s ground-breaking opera Orfeo ed Euridice
and continues with Haydn’s “Violin Concerto in G major”. Hallmarks of
the Classical style can be heard in the nobility and refinement of
Haydn’s work and in the expressive eloquence of the Larghetto
from Josef Mysliveček’s “Violin Concerto in D major”. Hope ventures into
the territory of Mozart’s “Violin Concerto No.3 in G major K.216” and
“Adagio in E major K.261”, both written in Salzburg in the mid-1770s,
before exploring the Romance for violin and strings by Johann Peter
Salomon. A sparkling new arrangement of Mozart’s “Turkish” Rondo,
complete with increasingly wild Turkish and Hungarian percussion
interventions, signals journey’s end.
“I relish researching
different styles of music,” Daniel Hope reflects. “Mozart’s music is
modern: so revolutionary that I find it hard to refer to it solely as
‘Classical’. We often use the word today to mean old-fashioned, and yet
Mozart is anything but old-fashioned. The Classical period of music
history is fascinating because it was at this time that composers,
artists and thinkers began to free themselves – to break away from the
hierarchical structures that were in place and from serving kings and
the aristocracy. We see how the Classical style, governed by the rules
of music and, to a certain extent, of etiquette, became a way of life.
It was out of this order that the idea of the virtuoso artist was born;
in a sense, it was really the beginning of the way we think about music
today.”
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario