Mozart’s Czech Mates at Wigmore Hall

Oct 4, 2022

“A superb concert: educational, certainly, but viscerally exciting too. Here’s to the next 25 years of The Mozartists!”

SEEN & HEARD

This September marked The Mozartists’ 25th anniversary season, launched by ‘Mozart’s Czech Mates’ on 26 September 2022 at Wigmore Hall.

Conductor Ian Page and his award-winning ensemble performed a fascinating programme of works by outstanding Bohemian composers with whom Mozart came into contact, either in person or through their music. Exquisite arias by Gluck, Mysliveček and Mozart himself (the superb concert aria that he wrote in Prague in the days following the première of Don Giovanni) were framed by two intensely dramatic G minor symphonies by Vanhal and Kozeluch. The dramatic standout, however, was a scene from Benda’s astonishingly visceral melodrama Medea, in which declaimed spoken word is underpinned and enhanced by a searing orchestral accompaniment.

The soloist was Associate Artist and ever-popular Swiss-Belgian soprano Chiara Skerath, whose voice “remains one of the most purely beautiful sopranos imaginable”.

The full review is available to read here: https://bit.ly/3EkKb1V