Mozart's Legacy at Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center

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2. Mozart's Legacy

A 22-year-old Mozart composed his Symphony No. 31, better known as the Paris Symphony, in 1778. Do the math: that’s an average of 1.4 symphonies composed each year (and we know he probably didn’t write too much when he was in diapers). And yet with 30 symphonies to his credit, Mozart was looking for work in Paris and wrote his 31st because no one would hire him and he had some time on his hands! Three things about this symphony stand out: it had no Minuet, as did other symphonies of that period; Mozart scored it for many instruments (also unusual for the period); and it was the first of his symphonies to use clarinets. Considering that no one was paying him, he could write whatever he wanted, couldn’t he?

When he was only 17, Mozart wrote his Violin Concerto No. 1. Employing a more-or-less standard structure with fast-then-slow-then-fast tempos, this entertaining concerto is crammed with illustrious short sections that show off the musicians’ skills. DPO Concertmaster Jessica Hung will perform the violin concerto.

Mozart was Richard Strauss’s favorite composer. Perhaps Strauss had Mozart’s personality in mind when he composed Don Quixote for cello, viola, and large orchestra in 1897. Based on Miguel de Cervantes’s book Don Quixote de la Mancha, the score is a form of instrumental opera in that instruments take the part of the story’s major characters: Don Quixote is portrayed by a solo cello, and his not-so-trusty sidekick Sancho Panza is portrayed by a solo viola, a tenor tuba, and a bass clarinet. Although there is no narrator, the piece foreshadows by almost 40 years Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf in its use of musical instruments as actors. DPO Principal Cello Andra Lunde Padrichelli and DPO Principal Viola Sheridan Currie will perform Don Quixote.