E-magazine Mozarteum Salzburg
The Mozart Week 2021 in Salzburg celebrates the Musico drammatico and Mozart's 265th birthday. Due to Corona, art, music and culture do not have it easy. But the Mozarteum proves that it is possible to put on an event even in such difficult times.
Together with the Mozarteum, we have developed an interactive e-magazine for the Mozart Week. In this magazine we introduce the artists, give insights into the newly designed foyer of the University of the Arts and make you look forward to the Music Week. Furthermore, we offer the possibility to buy tickets for the events directly.
All eleven festival days are filled with Mozart’s most exquisite musical delights. This time, almost all the pieces Mozart composed in minor will be presented – including his brilliant mass in C minor, conducted by Alain Altinoglu. Teresa Pieschacón Raphael met the artist for an interview to talk about Mozart's complex work.
A short extract from the interview:
Is Mozart's Missa in C minor KV 427 from 1783 a declaration of love to God or to his bride Constanze, as Rolando Villazón says?
Alain Altinoglu (laughs): All the composers of that time grew up with Christian traditions, so I could imagine both. But with these beautiful soprano solos that Mozart wrote for Constanze, I think that the work should be presented more like a 'love piece' and not like dark and serious church music.
Constanze's aria 'Et incarnatus' from the Credo of the Mass, with its colouraturas, seems a bit like opera ...
... and yet it is sacred music. That is Mozart's genius: every opera, but also every mass has an existential background. To me, the most important thing about this mass seems to be to preserve homogeneity. When choosing the singers, the introspective character of the performers was very important to all of us. They must have a sense of introspection, be able to transmit feelings through singing and not just trombone outwardly, which is often the case with opera singers.
"I have God always in front of my eyes," Mozart wrote to his father in 1777. At the same time he distanced from Catholicism in 1784 and joined the Freemasons. Was Mozart religious?
Many children of that time had great respect for their father and maybe he just wanted to reassure him with these words. We do not know. Mozart's only God is the music itself, and at the same time his music comes from God. That's how I would describe it.
You can read everything about the Mozart Week 2021 in the Mozarteum's e-magazine.
