Geo Quiz

Mozart concerto

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Mozart’s brilliant career flashed by pretty quickly. He lived only till the age of 35 but he managed to compose more than 600 symphonies, concertos and piano works.

Mozart

He even shows up in today’s Geo Quiz. We’re looking for Mozart’s place of birth today. It’s a European cultural capital where the child prodigy first sat and listened to his older sister Nannerl take piano lessons.

Even at the age of 3 he seemed fascinated by it all. This city of Mozart’s childhood lies on the Salzach River at the northern reaches of the Alps.

A few years ago, all 35 churches in this city rang their bells to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus.

Now the city has something new to celebrate.

“The concerto movement is almost crazy, it’s extremely difficult Mozart writes at the heading molto allegro making it even more difficult to lay and then very short notes and so the pianist is really sweating hard.”

We’ll hear more about a newly discovered Mozart concerto…

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed more than 600 pieces before his death at the age of 35. His symphonies, choral music and operas are popular fare at classical concerts and festivals around the world.

But you might not know this one:

Sound: Mozart piano concerto – G maj – performed on harpsichord by Florian Birsak

This piano concerto in G major is one of two pieces that have recently been identified as Mozart compositions. He apparently wrote them when he was about 7 years old. They were premiered yesterday in Salzburg, the Austrian city where Mozart was born. Salzburg is the answer to our Geo Quiz.

The new Mozart music turned up in the archive of the International Mozarteum Foundation. Ulrich Leisinger is director of research there and he says the music is pure Mozart.

Listen to our interview:

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