‘Mozart! Mozart! Forgive your assassin. I confess I killed you. Forgive me, Mozart!’ So, to the dramatic opening strains of Mozart’s G minor Symphony No. 25, begins Amadeus – perhaps the greatest film about classical music ever produced. Described as a ‘fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri’ by Peter Shaffer, upon whose play the script was based, the film takes as its premise the ‘confession’ of Antonio Salieri to the murder of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – a rumour first circulated in 1825 when whisperings of a poisoning gripped Vienna, and embellished in the years that followed by playwright Alexander Pushkin and composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Though at times there may have been professional tensions, there is little historical evidence of a bitter rivalry between the two composers, let alone a murderous plot. Yet, this gripping black fantasy of genius and ‘mediocrity’ – as a jealous and wrathful Salieri must accept as his God-given fate – proves the perfect vehicle to showcase the dazzling skill and versatility of Mozart’s music, and to reflect in a surprisingly sophisticated way on the nature of brilliance, and creativity’s power to consume and destroy.
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Discovering Donizetti - Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day
Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day. For most people, undertaking a lockdown project meant learning to bake sourdough bread, getting fit with Joe Wicks, or taking up a language. But Professor Roger Parker, the eminent historian of Italian opera and emeritus professor at King's College London, had something far more ambitious in mind. He set about unearthing songs by Gaetano Donizetti - many of which had been lost since the composer's lifetime - and the enterprise turned into a two-year labour of love.
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Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction. It's a dimension of music-making that once was integral to many a British holiday experience, yet now has all but vanished. The tide went out, you might say, on the professional seaside (or pier, or spa) orchestra many decades ago. In their glory days, though - perhaps a quarter-century on either side of 1900-these ensembles were everywhere, from Bridlington to Eastbourne, New Brighton to Worthing, Blackpool to Bexhill-on-Sea, Cleethorpes to Brighton... the list is astonishing.
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As we get older do we respond differently to that vast canon of music dealing with mortality? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise? Or do human beings possess such a flexible sense of empathy that we can relate to virtually any state of mind if it is evoked convincingly enough by a composer?
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The spirit of soprano Birgit Nilsson is alive and well in the town of her birth, home to a festival dedicated to her memory
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\"At this moment in time we don't need more virtuosi. We need musicians to engage with the philosophy of music
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What happens when classical music-style levels of ambition, invention and sheer length are brought to pop? The answer, as Meurig Bowen explains, is Prog Rock
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