Mozart Viewpoints

BILL NEWMAN reports on the 250th anniversary

According to our own preferences, there are various ways of enjoying the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. If you are wise, there are successions of concerts and stageworks which can be enjoyed throughout the world, especially in this particular Anniversary Year. Several are being broadcast, so music lovers might prefer to listen rather than indulge in huge outlays touring the Festival locations. Others, like myself, can hand pick their favourite artists past and present from their personal library of commercial recordings and DVDs, where the musical world has now become everybody's oyster through the huge range and cross section of talents spread over several generations of fine interpreters with magnetic personalities.

From a commercial standpoint, the British Broadcasting Corporation and their so-called teams of experts consider themselves firmly in the driving seat when they decide what music you should be listening to, who should be presenting and performing it, and how this will vastly improve listeners' knowledge and insights. Especially when it concerns the Great Masters of Classical Music fame who have become the most likely candidates to hit the Popularity Charts alongside the Top of the Pops scene with its myriad performers worldwide, recording setups, disc jockeys, and Festival mania -- now deployed and raved about through the medium of internet websites, email and God knows what else.

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