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Classical 101

A ProMusica Recording and Mozart's Fastest Symphony, This Week on Symphony @ 7

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Composer, Peter Schickele has a sense of humor as well as serious compositional chops. His music will be featured on this week's Symphony @7 as tribute to his 80th birthday.

The "Linz" Symphony by Mozart is the next featured work on Symphony @ 7 this Thursday evening on Classical 101.  Also, for Peter Schickele's 80th birthday coming up on Friday, I'll have his Clarinet Concerto in a recording with the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra.

Mozart's Symphony No. 36 in C  is a work written in haste, but such is his genius that you could never tell.  In 1783, Mozart and his new wife Constanze were on their way back home to Vienna after a visit to Salzburg.  They made a stopover in the Austrian town of Linz where the local count, having heard of Mozart's impending visit, announced a concert.  For this event, so the story goes, Mozart wrote this symphony in only four days.

If it had taken forty days to write, it would still be a remarkable achievement.  It is Mozart's grandest symphony up to that time with the most elaborate opening movement he had yet composed.  We'll be hearing a fine recording of this wonderful work with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Charles Mackerras.

Peter Schickele turns 80 on Friday, and to acknowledge his achievements as a composer, I'll have his Clarinet Concerto.  This work was commissioned by the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus for its 25th anniversary in 2004.  Robert Spring will be the soloist and Timothy Russell conducts.

Schickele is best-known as a musical humorist and creator of  the fictional P.D.Q. Bach, "the only forgotten son of the Bach family," but his abilities go far beyond that.  He is a fine composer in his own right, and we'll hear a good example of that on Thursday's Symphony @ 7.

-LzDYo