Quote:
Originally Posted by bfisher
Wow, he never heard a performance of "The Magic Flute" or the Clarinet Concerto in A? It was in the era just before recorded performances were available, so perhaps that was a factor in what was in demand.
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I was struck by the omission of "The Magic Flute" too, and though he mentions the opera quite a number of times over the years, there's no review of any performance, so maybe he just knew it from the score. And the only Concerto in A he mentions is one played by the violinist Joachim--Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5, presumably.
Shaw has this to say about the demand:
"I know of more than one concert-giver who asks every singer he engages for some song by Mozart, and is invariably met with the plea of excessive difficulty. You cannot 'make an effect' with Mozart, or work your audience up by playing on their hysterical susceptibilities.
"Nothing but the finest execution--beautiful, expressive, and intelligent--will serve; and the worst of it is, that the phrases are so perfectly clear and straightforward, that you are found out the moment you swerve by a hair's breadth from perfection, whilst, at the same time, your work is so obvious, that everyone thinks it must be easy, and puts you down remorselessly as a duffer for botching it. Naturally, then, we do not hear much of Mozart; and what we do hear goes far to destroy his reputation."
Jim