Mozart and his family spent 15 months in London when the composer was eight years old. In London he wrote his first symphonies and first vocal works, serving major notice to the world. Those have been recorded before and are included here, but what's novel is the inclusion of music by other composers whom Mozart would have heard in London. Many of the works here receive their premiere recordings, and The Mozartists and conductor Ian Page ably sketch the influences they likely had on Mozart. Some of the influences from J.C. ...
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Mozart and his family spent 15 months in London when the composer was eight years old. In London he wrote his first symphonies and first vocal works, serving major notice to the world. Those have been recorded before and are included here, but what's novel is the inclusion of music by other composers whom Mozart would have heard in London. Many of the works here receive their premiere recordings, and The Mozartists and conductor Ian Page ably sketch the influences they likely had on Mozart. Some of the influences from J.C. Bach have been recognized before, but Page goes more deeply into them: you can hear Mozart's way of assigning expressive meaning to transitional passagework, uncanny already at age eight, in the music of the "London Bach." Sample the Harpsichord Concerto in D major, Op. 1, No. 6. Elsewhere, there is English- and Italian-language vocal music by Thomas Arne, Samuel Arnold, Egidio Duni (with a very patter-song-like aria inserted into an opera based on Richardson's novel Pamela ),...
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