Mozart kicks off season
The New Mexico Philharmonic will kick off its 2019 classics season with a trio of works by Mozart.
“It’s hard to choose which are the best pieces of Mozart because there are so many,” conductor Roberto Minczuk said.
The orchestra will open Saturday’s program at Popejoy Hall with the composer’s 1782 Turkish-inspired overture to “The Abduction From the Seraglio.”
“People were fascinated by Turkey at the time,” Minczuk said. “It was very trendy.”
The composer based the music in part on Turkish folk tunes.
Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 will star Olga Kern Piano Competition third-place winner Anastasiya Naplekova.
“He wrote 27 piano concertos,” Minczuk said. “Each one of them is amazing. It’s in a minor key and it’s a darker approach. But it’s so wonderfully rich. It explores both the piano and the orchestra in a very engaging dialogue. The second movement is very famous; it was one of the themes of (the 1984 movie) ‘Amadeus’.”
“At the very end, like in his opera ‘Don Giovanni,’ he turns to the major key and ends on a happy note.”
The Symphony in G Minor closes the program with one of Mozart’s most famous masterpieces.
“Anybody that’s heard the opening notes knows that,” Minczuk said. “It’s a very profound piece. It’s not just the beauty of the work. Intellectually, it’s so smart.”
Mozart pre-dated the 20th-century 12-tone technique popularized by the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg.
“It builds a melody without repeating a single note,” Minczuk said.
Mozart died in 1791 shortly after composing the symphony.