October's Artist of the Month
Vladimir Feltsman conducts works by Mozart

Two lofty triads loom majestically at the end of the brief but blindingly beautiful creative path of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) – three operas to libretti by Lorenzo da Ponte (Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte) and the final three symphonies (E Flat Major, G Minor and C Major).
Staged in Vienna in May of 1786, Le nozze di Figaro lasted just nine performances. But already in January 1787 it reigned triumphant in Mozart’s beloved Prague. In autumn the same year, Prague delightedly witnessed Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and in the summer of 1788, in an incredibly short period (just two months!), Mozart wrote three magnificent symphonies. And all this against a background of constantly growing adversity – financial ruin, his wife’s illness and the death of his children… Fate had sent Mozart – “the son of Heaven” – some cruel worldly trials.
The opera Così fan tutte, premiered at Vienna’s Burgtheater on 26 January 1790 – less than two years before Mozart’s death – has for two centuries lain in the shadow cast by the extremely popular Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and another of the composer’s masterpieces – Die Zauberflöte. It was only in the latter half of the 20^th century that interest in the psychologically true, precise artistic “research” into the loftiest human emotion came to life. Così fan tutte is an opera about male and female constancy, about the vicissitudes of love and about its power…

In his final three symphonies, Mozart takes a brave look towards the future. If the famous Fortieth Symphony in G Minor foretells the arrival of Schubert the Romantic, the Forty-First Symphony in C Major (not by chance did it become associated with Jupiter, a name given by God knows whom!) is full of true, Beethoven-like power and heroics. Already contemporaries saw in Symphony in C Major a vivid combination of gallant and studied styles, refined and subtle melodics with their sophisticated polyphonic development.
“Such an abundance of beauty … almost fatigues the soul and at the same time veils the effect of the whole. And yet we wish the artist well, his only mistake being his excessive perfection,” as one contemporary critique of Mozart says. The perfection of Mozart’s great works has remained alive to the present day.

Iosif Raiskin