MOZART: Overture to Die Zauberflöte, K. 620*
MOZART/ROBERT LEVIN: Concerto for Violin and Piano
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SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944, "The Great"
The irrepressible period conductor Nicholas McGegan returns to Aspen for a program of Classical masterworks, beginning with the galloping overture to Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
Pianist, musicologist, and composer Robert Levin, who has completed and reconstructed many unfinished works of Mozart, sees the composer as a “short order cook” who had to “write pieces for the people who wanted him to write them when they wanted him to.” Levin will play one of these partly abandoned “dishes,” the rarely heard Concerto for Violin and Piano, which Levin himself restored to its original concerto form.
Topping off this delicious musical banquet is Schubert’s final symphony, a profound and monumental work never performed in his lifetime. The manuscript of the “Great” C Major was discovered by Robert Schumann during an impromptu visit to Schubert’s brother. Schumann wrote, “[It], including the date and a number of corrections, is entirely in Schubert's hand, which often appears to have been flying as fast as his pen could go.” Schumann showed the symphony to his friend Mendelssohn, who premiered it to rave reviews.
