A child prodigy on the keyboard, Mozart also displayed stunning talent on the violin. As a child he wanted to join in during one of his father’s chamber music recitals. When his father refused, the boy cried and stamped his foot until he got his way and astounded everyone… At the age of 15 he was solo violin with the orchestra of the Archbishopric of Salzburg. Four years later he wrote five concertos for his own use, and the series will end with the Concerto in A major.In the especially enjoyable rondo Finale a section of “Turkish music” is played, where the cellos and double basses play on the back of the bow.

Some 130 years later, not far away, in Vienna, Mahler wrote his most moving symphony, the Sixth “Tragic” Symphony. Although written at a happy time it conveys a period of creative interrogation and deep personal doubts. Mahler wrote “I need to reassemble the scattered fragments of my inner self.” An excursion in the Dolomites allowed him at last to complete this demiurgic symphony which Mahler’s admirers often consider his most successful work. Deafening tutti, whirling gusts, victorious marches but also picturesque echoes of cowbells… until the last movement where, commented Alma Mahler, “the hero receives three mighty blows of fate, the third of which fells him like a tree”.