Certainly, you have heard of Mozart for Babies? This is Mozart the baby, a set of keyboard sonatas with violin or flute accompaniment that Mozart published in London as his Opus 3 just short of his ninth birthday. It bore a dedication to English Queen Sophie Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strehlitz, a wise choice, as the Queen rewarded the boy with the present of 50 guineas, a handsome sum at the time that probably even impressed Mozart's worldly and weary father Leopold. Flute players are as enthusiastic about taking up the ...
Read More
Certainly, you have heard of Mozart for Babies? This is Mozart the baby, a set of keyboard sonatas with violin or flute accompaniment that Mozart published in London as his Opus 3 just short of his ninth birthday. It bore a dedication to English Queen Sophie Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strehlitz, a wise choice, as the Queen rewarded the boy with the present of 50 guineas, a handsome sum at the time that probably even impressed Mozart's worldly and weary father Leopold. Flute players are as enthusiastic about taking up the cause of these early flute sonatas -- the only ones by Mozart so designated -- as violinists are anxious to avoid them. As they are really keyboard sonatas with a flute accompaniment, there isn't much incentive for the flute in playing them, as the flute part mostly follows or embellishes the keyboard in a perverse fashion that was for some reason popular in the mid to late eighteenth century. Some have tried to "fix" the problem through heavy editing of Mozart's work that makes...
Read Less
