Music BBC Radio 3's Mozart season is well under way and I can already feel myself becoming more intelligent with every beat, my eyes popping out of my head every five minutes, though I imagine there will be some listeners turning off for two weeks, clutching their Deutsche Grammophon recordings of Stravinsky and Bartok to their chest until the diminutive show-off goes away again.
For all their hatred of his music, surely they can be outraged by the news that a section of Mozart's birth house, or The Mozarthaus, is to be turned into a SPAR shop. Even taking into account this isn't some relic and the same property was previously owned by a family run delicatessen it just sounds wrong and not in the same way as the demolition of Ringo's old abode.
Meanwhile, the brilliantly named Lucien R Karhausen wonders what killed Mozart. It wasn't Saliari according to historians who no doubt chortled their way through Milos Forman's film and might have been one of over a hundred and forty causes of death most of which could have been treated through modern medicine. The man died at 35. I'm 36. That seems significant somehow. [via]
A lot of critics get snotty about Amadeus, missing the point that it's not a play about Mozart, but about Salieri. The central idea being "what if Salieri started to believe the rumours about him and used them as a last gasp at fame?"
ReplyDeleteSeen in that context it's a fantastic portrayal of ego and madness by Schaffer. It's not supposed to be a documentary.
Great soundtrack album too!