Premier coup d’archet

In 1778, at the age of 22, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visited Paris with his mother. On a previous visit, he and his older sister, Nannerl, had been paraded before Europe’s courts and aristocrats as child prodigies. Nannerl was then twelve; Wolfgang, seven. Mozart’s 1778 reception was somewhat different. He claimed the performance of his own Sinfonia Concertante had been sabotaged by an Italian composer, Giuseppe Cambini. To make up for that, J...