Word: mozartism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Some conductors prefer Beethoven, others Wagner. Some like sopranos, others tenors. Conductor Peter Maag's rather specialized preference is for the key of E-flat major. "Tonalities are like colors," he explains. "Have you noticed that when Mozart attacks E-flat he al ways uses clarinets, and when he attacks D-major he always uses oboes? E-flat suggests something very mature and saturated. D-major music is whiter and sharper. E-flat suggests a dark tone, a dark color like dark blue or green...
Last week at Lincoln Center's Mozart-Haydn Festival, Maag demonstrated his preoccupation in a concert with the New York Chamber Orchestra. Three of the four works were in E-flat -Mozart's Symphony No. 39, and Haydn's Trumpet Concerto and "Schoolmaster" Symphony (which he conducted from the harpsichord). Maag also programmed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23, but that was scored in A-major, and everybody pretended not to notice...
Tonal Anguish. What the audience did notice was that there was nothing minor about Maag's conducting talent. He has all the requirements for a superior conductor of Haydn and Mozart -a faultless sense of classical proportion and a keen ear for blended Mozartean sonority that allows important detail to come through crisply...
...well as possible and put them next to the right other picture, and that's called programming. The whole idea of the concert hall grew up with the idea of the symphony. It began in the 18th century and finished with the beginning of the 20th century: from Mozart to Mahler, roughly. The symphonic form is dead, finished. But why despair about it? Just accept it. That tremendous repertory of masterpieces should go on and on for hundreds of years just as Rembrandts...
...composition. But, he says, "I wanted to get into pop music and rock. I can do this much better than the other stuff. Musical comedy is the great American sound, but most of its composers haven't had the technique to carry it further. They write as if Mozart and Weill had never lived. Only Gershwin and Bernstein have gone on to higher musical theater." Elephant Steps indicates that Silverman hopes someday to add his name to that list...