A Prophet called Amadeus: A musical farce!

Mozart’s six string quartets dedicated to Haydn aren’t just any other pieces of 18-century chamber music: they proved to be a prophecy of the music that was to come in the next two hundred years. Notably, in the second movement of K 428 we clearly hear the famous “Tristan” theme, while the introduction in the first movement of K 465 (the so-called “dissonant”) sounds much like Bloch or Shostakovich!

I have created this video farce in order to illustrate these points, using the above-mentioned musical excerpts from Mozart’s quartets. The photos of Wagner and Shostakovich are shown.

Tristan und Isolde "as Wagner wrote it"!

According to Karl Böhm, Leonard Bernstein's interpretation of Tristan was the closest ever to the true Wagner spirit:

"For the first time somebody dares to perform the music as Wagner wrote it. The rest of us never dared to!"

 Here is Leonard Bernstein leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Prelude from Tristan und Isolde.