As medici.tv’s Chief Content Officer I spend a lot of time thinking about classical music—and a lot of time on the internet. Here’s my selection of the top five news items you need to see this week if you want to stay in the know.
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1778 Mozart manuscript discovered in Paris (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
The Bibliothèque nationale de France has announced the discovery of a previously unknown autograph manuscript by Mozart within the collections of its Music Department, unearthed during ongoing cataloguing work. The 1778 manuscript includes composition exercises Mozart worked on during lessons with harpist Marie-Louise-Philippine de Bonnières de Guînes, making it a valuable insight into his teaching process, as well as six complete pieces for flute and harp, which were premiered this past weekend at the BnF.
This is not the first time “new” Mozart has been discovered in recent years. In 2021, pianist Seong-Jin Cho had the honors of premiering 94 seconds of a reconstructed work discovered just months earlier (and we had the honor of streaming it!):
Classical music takes center stage at the G7 summit (Gramophone)
A moment of musical diplomacy took place last week at the G7 summit in Evian as American cellist Yo-Yo Ma, French violinist Renaud Capuçon, British violist Timothy Ridout, and Italian pianist Beatrice Rana joined forces to perform Brahms’ First Piano Quartet before an audience of world leaders. Ma, Capuçon, and Ridout will all be performing together at the Rencontres musicales d’Evian next week—catch their performance live on Wednesday!
Danielle de Niese on directing her first opera (The Guardian)
In her first diary entry for The Guardian, star soprano Danielle de Niese spoke about her latest venture: “changing sides” to direct her very first opera production. De Niese is directing a new chamber version of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, touring across the UK this summer. It’s an opera she knows inside and out as a singer, and one she hopes to portray in a different light: “The real challenge – and the real joy – is going beyond the well-trodden path of cliche to tell a story that is not only comedic and touching, but perilous and, most importantly, plausibly real.”
Laufey on the power of dissonance (NYT)
Two mainstream artists spoke about their relationship with classical music in the press this week. First, in the New York Times’ “The Big Ideas” series, Grammy-winning artist Laufey wrote eloquently about learning to embrace dissonance and following in the footsteps of twentieth-century composers: “Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Copland wielded dissonance on its own to express love — as well as anger, pain and rebellion. They broke the boundaries and foundational principles of classical music that they had studied so diligently in their early years. They also broke the very rules that had once seemed so indestructible to me as a young musician.”
Jon Batiste talks about reimagining Mozart (WQXR)
In multi-Grammy, Emmy, and Oscar-winning pianist Jon Batiste’s new album “Black Mozart,” he revisits Mozart’s repertoire through the lens of Black American musical traditions. In this hour-long segment with WQXR, he performs excerpts from the album and delves into the philosophy behind it with interviewer Terrence McKnight, including moving beyond the “dogma” of the score and allowing yourself to “continue the conversation” with the greats of the past. Batiste is a fabulous speaker and it’s fascinating to hear how he imagines his role in “expanding the continuum of human creation.”
