Portrait of Mozart painted posthumously by Barbara Kraft, 1819.
Five years ago, when Peter Oundjian was relatively new in his position as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director, he announced the Mozart@249 festival at the TSO’s annual season media conference. He explained that he didn’t think we had to wait until the all important 250th birthday to have an excuse to have a Mozart festival so he was going to get a head start on everybody else. It was rather endearing, although we all knew it was really just clever marketing. But who cares? What’s not to love about Mozart, especially in the dark cold days of January?
Well here we are five years later and the annual January Mozart Festival is so popular that the TSO artistic team just keep programming it – hence Mozart@254. The festival opened last night and runs until January 24 at Roy Thomson Hall and CONTINUE READING >
