Name: Mozart und die Bäche
Start: 2024-09-08T19:00:00
Location: The Redoubt

Peter Whelan

Se-Eun Hyun

Beethoven Orchester Bonn

This year’s Hofkapellen season does not begin as usual with an » unearthed « piece that has been lying dormant in an archive for 200 years and needs to be kissed awake by our musicians. But it starts with music that was played in Bonn: music from two of the most important musical families of the 18th century. When the thunderbolt boy Wolfgang Amadeus stopped off in London at the age of eight, the Mozart family befriended the youngest son of the famous St Thomas-Kantor: Johann Christian Bach was an elegant figure, a bon vivant and composer in the gallant style. But he was not the only influence on the travelling child prodigy. His eldest brother Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach – a very contrasting, rather austere figure – was later even described by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as his » musical father «. The programme includes a festive symphony by Johann Christian Bach, a stormy cello concerto by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and – as a symphonic coupling – a four-movement version of Mozart’s magnificent Posthorn Serenade. But Johann Sebastian Bach, who is at the centre of the Bach family for us today, should not be missing from this concert: If there is enough applause, the audience will experience in the encore which lines of music by Papa Bach were found on the back of a sketch by the teenager Ludwig van B. … Music that was most likely performed in Bonn at the time – at one of the leading musical courts in Europe!