Magic Flute Overture
Conductor: Kurt Redel

It's well known that Mozart was something of a prodigy as a child, but he carried on getting better throughout his short life. The Magic Flute is one of his best loved operas and was actually written in the year of his death (1791).

The operatic equivalent of a buddy movie, the Magic Flute tells the story of a birdcatcher and a nobleman who meet in an enchanted forest. Together, they embark on a quest to find love, becoming masons along they way. It's a farcical comedy with a strange but happy ending.

The much debated masonic symbolism in the opera takes many forms, but probably the most talked about is the repeatedly occuring number three. The opera opens with a motto-theme of three chords, in a key with three flats. There are three fairies, a temple with three doors and three pages. Since the masons are a secret society however, the significance of the number three is lost on most people.

Piano Concerto No. 24
Soloist: Emile Naoumoff
Conductor: Alain Lombard

During Mozart's time, it was quite common for performers to write works with the intention of performing them themselves. This made good business sense because it meant that if you liked the music he played, you had pay to listen to him playing it. By never parting with the score, (or, in some cases by never writing it down), composers protected their copyright.

Thankfully, he did find the time to write this one down, and it is a total gem. Unusually for a Mozart concerto, he has used both clarinets and obes in the orchestra. Normally he would have only used one or the other.

Not written down are the cadenzas (the parts when the soloist plays alone). It used to be common practice to improvise your cadenzas on the spot, although now it is more common for performers to use one by a great artist from the past.

As an encore, we hear the Rondo from Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11 Alla Turca.

Symphony No. 40
Conductor:  Jean Pierre Wallez

Thanks to Nokia's use of this piece as a mobile phone ringtone, anybody who uses public transport will be immediately familiar with the opening of Mozart's 40th Symphony. It's impossible to know what Mozart would have had to say about this - although he might not have been as upset as you might imagine.

Mozart was not against the idea of music and new technology. He was indeed something of a pioneer. He was one of the first people to adopt the clarinet as an orchestral instrument. He used trombones in the Magic Flute more than thirty years before Beethoven invited them into the symphony orchestra. He also wrote pieces for a stack of unusual instruments including the bassett horn (large clarinet) and the glass harmonica (lots of wine glasses in a bowl of water).

While it's easy to imagine Mozart as being as restrained and refined as his music, it's worth remembering that even the piano was a relatively new instrument during his lifetime, and that his contribution to the history of music is important for its innovation as well as for its pure beauty.