Southern Pro Musica celebrates Mozart
Jonathan Willcocks brings his professional chamber orchestra Southern Pro Musica to Chichester for a special concert entitled The Genius of Mozart.
As Jonathan says, it “features a programme that travels from a work by his moderatelytalented but hugely ambitious and pushy father Leopold Mozart, through an early symphony that Mozart wrote when a childprogidytotwoofhisfinest late works – the Clarinet Concerto and his final Symphony No 41 (Jupiter).”
The concert is in St Paul's Church, Chichester on Saturday, May 11, with tickets on www.southernpromusica.org
“The theme of the concert iswheredidmozartcomefrom sowegetthisworkbyhisfather and then an early work which then flows into these two absolutemasterpieces.mozart'sfluencyandinstinctasacomposer were extraordinary. His talent just flowed out of him and that was apparent from a very early age as a composer. By the age of tenhehadareallyquitesophisticated portfolio of works. It really was remarkable.
“The whole essence of the concertistotakethelifeanddevelopmentofwolfgangamadeus Mozart starting with a short symphony by his father who was the epitome of the moderately talented composer. His music would not be known at all if he had not had Wolfgang Amadeus as his son but really the idea is to show the starting point.andthenweseetheearly symphonywhichmozartwrote whenhewasaboutseven.it'san extraordinarypiecebutyoucan still see in it the influences of the music that he was growing up with. And then we move on to the two masterpieces.
“We have a brilliant young clarinettist as our soloist in the concerto Jonathan Leibovitz who is a multi-international award-winning musician who hasperformedtogreatacclaim all over Europe and further afield.”
Jonathan added: “Southern Pro Musica is a professional chamber orchestra which I havenowbeenmusicaldirector of for more than 30 years. Reallyitexistsforthreepurposes. The origin was that we needed a really good professional orchestratopartnerchoirsinperformance which Southern Pro Musicahasdoneregularlywith thechichestersingers.before, we were really dependent on a pick-up team of freelance players which didn't really work so well. But also there is just the great advantage of having players that play together regularly –andsowecameupwithsouthern Pro Musica.
“The second strand is that the orchestra does its own concerts in its own right of which this concert in Chichester is one. The third strand of what we do is that we are very, very keen to introduce orchestral music to young people so that theycanexperienceanorchestra live. Each year we give half a dozen concerts specifically for young people. We give the concerts usually two in Chichester Festival Theatre, usually two in G-liveinguildfordandusually two in Southampton. In January we gave these six concerts and it was fantastic. We have a very charismatic compere who is also a magician and in Januaryweplayedtomorethan 5,000children.theseconcerts reallyaremarvellous.theaudiences get to hear eight or nine pieces in an hour.”