Victoria Martino: Mozart in Austria
MozArt and the Grand Tour: From Rococo to Romanticism - Art and Music in the Courts of 18th-Century Europe features the Musica Pro Arte Ensemble with art historian and concert violinist Victoria Martino, presenting her annual five-week lecture-concert series on art and music through the ages. This spring's installment celebrates the 260th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, following the great composer through the courts of 18th-century Europe. Each lecture-concert will feature the art and music of a country that Mozart visited on one or more of his Grand Tours. The audience will be able to step into Mozart's shoes and experience the sights and sounds of Europe's 18th-century elite. The musical culmination of each evening will be a violin concerto by Mozart.
In Imperial Austria of Mozart's time, architecture was still dominated by Balthasar Neumann and Lukas von Hildebrandt, and the decorative painters Cosmas Damian Asam and Franz Anton Maulbertsch. The sculptor Raphael Donner set the stage for the neoclassical style. The great master of the enlightenment in music of the time was Franz Josef Haydn, who served as Mozart's mentor in Vienna, after the young composer shook off his father Leopold's influence and abandoned his native city of Salzburg.