He was born on “27. Jänner 1756,” as the plaque outside his birthplace on Salzburg’s Getreidegasse says, using an Austrian form of January.
I had the fortune to be there between just after Christmas in 1990. As I’d just spent my first two months in Czechoslovakia, my parents had come to meet me in Munich. From there I showed them around Central Europe, including my lodgings in Martin, Slovakia, finishing off with Bratislava and New Year’s Eve in Vienna.
The one-night stay in Salzburg included a concert of “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” probably the composer’s most popular piece. Though I knew his work fairly well, this was the beginning of a relation with his music that was to go deeper during my years in Europe.
I sang his sumptuous “Ave Verum Corpus” with several choruses in the region – and have sung it with groups in the U.S. as well. The pinnacle of my Mozartiana was learning the bass part to his Requiem, which I was blessed to perform with the St. Cecilia Choir of St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral in East Slovakia’s Košice.
Please see the video of a rehearsal with that chorus below, as well as memorabilia including the 250th anniversary of his birth in Columbus, Ohio, part of the slideshow above.
I had the fortune to be there between just after Christmas in 1990. As I’d just spent my first two months in Czechoslovakia, my parents had come to meet me in Munich. From there I showed them around Central Europe, including my lodgings in Martin, Slovakia, finishing off with Bratislava and New Year’s Eve in Vienna.
The one-night stay in Salzburg included a concert of “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” probably the composer’s most popular piece. Though I knew his work fairly well, this was the beginning of a relation with his music that was to go deeper during my years in Europe.
I sang his sumptuous “Ave Verum Corpus” with several choruses in the region – and have sung it with groups in the U.S. as well. The pinnacle of my Mozartiana was learning the bass part to his Requiem, which I was blessed to perform with the St. Cecilia Choir of St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral in East Slovakia’s Košice.
Please see the video of a rehearsal with that chorus below, as well as memorabilia including the 250th anniversary of his birth in Columbus, Ohio, part of the slideshow above.
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