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Donald Macleod looks at Mozart’s last year, as the composer took on a monstrous workload.

Five years before Mozart’s premature death aged 35, the composer felt at the top of his game. He was performing regularly in Vienna and his music was beloved throughout the city. However, the Austro-Turkish War between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire would soon have a negative impact on Mozart’s prospects, along with changing musical taste in the Austrian capital. The nobility had more important things to do than hold concerts and commission new music. Money was in shorter supply. As a composer for hire, Mozart had to change tack and write chamber music for publication and for performance in middle class homes, rather than concertos for the nobility.

In this programme Donald Macleod looks at Mozart’s last year. Indebted, insecure, worried, but creatively fertile, Mozart was hustling for concert subscribers while fretting about finding the money to support his family. He essayed a new style of church music: unadorned, devotional, easily understood, with touching directness and simplicity. We also see Mozart meeting his older colleague, Joseph Haydn, for the final time, the senior composer presciently announcing to his friend that they would never meet again. Did Mozart feel the end coming? Does this explain his frantic urge to compose in his last 12 months?

Ave verum corpus, K. 618
Anna Maria Panzarella, soprano
Nathalie Stutzmann, contralto
Christoph Prégardien, tenor
Nathan Berg, bass-baritone
Les Arts Florissants Chorus
Les Arts Florissants
Williams Christie, conductor

Six German Dances, K. 600
No. 1 in C Major
No. 3 in B-Flat Major
No. 6 in D Major
Vienna Mozart Ensemble
Willi Boskovsky, conductor

Kyrie in D minor, K. 341
English Baroque Soloists
Monteverdi Choir
John Eliot Gardiner, conductor

Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, Op. 17, K. 595
I. Allegro
English Chamber Orchestra
Murray Perahia, piano, conductor

String Quintet No. 6 in E flat major, K. 614
I. Allegretto di molto
IV. Allegro
Hausmusik London