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Showing posts with label Classics with Klaus Döring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Classics with Klaus Döring. Show all posts
Friday, August 14, 2026
Friday, August 7, 2026
How Constanze Mozart Saved Mozart’s Music in Her Widowhood
by Emily E. Hogstad August 6th, 2026
On the morning of 5 December 1791, composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna at the age of 35. He had only been ill for two weeks.
His widow Constanze was 29 years old. She had been at his bedside through his illness, nursing him through his final days.
“Words fail me…to describe how his devoted wife in her utter misery threw herself on her knees and implored the Almighty for His aid,” her sister Sophie wrote in a letter years later.
Completely grief-stricken, Constanze was unable to attend his funeral.
Henry Nelson O’Neil: The Last Hours of Mozart, 1860s
The obstacles she’d face in her widowhood would be staggering. Mozart had died with substantial debts. There was no inheritance to speak of, only a chaotic collection of musical manuscripts. Plus, she had two surviving children to care for: Karl Thomas, age seven, and Franz Xaver, just five months old.
It would have been understandable for Constanze to crumble, but she did not. On the contrary, over a period of decades, she would oversee the canonisation of her husband – and ensure that her husband’s music would outlast them both.
Escaping Poverty: Constanze’s Early Widowhood (1791–1797)
Constanze Mozart as portrayed in 1782 by her brother-in-law Joseph Lange © Wikipedia
In an era before reliable social safety nets and few professional opportunities for young widows and mothers, Constanze knew she had to move quickly after Wolfgang’s death to stabilise her finances.
She began by petitioning Emperor Leopold II for a widow’s pension. Granted within weeks, it provided a modest but essential lifeline, thanks to Mozart’s position as imperial chamber composer.
Friends, family members, and admirers also helped out, organising benefit concerts in Vienna and Prague. Constanze’s sister Aloysia – a well-known singer – performed at one, as did a young Ludwig van Beethoven.
Crucially, Constanze arranged to have Mozart’s Requiem finished quickly – while shaping the narrative around it.
The work had been commissioned by Count Franz von Walsegg, an amateur composer known for passing off commissioned works as his own. To prevent this, Constanze hired composers Joseph von Eybler and Franz Xaver Süssmayr to complete the score. She then presented it as entirely Mozart’s, allowing her to claim the commission fee – and, importantly, block Walsegg from taking credit.
She also circulated the claim that Mozart believed he had been poisoned. Whether she truly believed this or used it as a form of myth-making remains unclear, but the story helped fuel 19th-century fascination with Mozart and continues to shape his legacy today.
At the same time, Constanze recognised the financial value of Mozart’s manuscripts. As their sole custodian, she sold them strategically and negotiated major editions with the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf & Härtel. These editions became foundational to later scholarship and performance.
A trained soprano, Constanze also returned to the stage. In 1794, she organised benefit performances of La clemenza di Tito in Vienna and elsewhere, singing the role of Vitellia while Aloysia performed Sextus.
In 1795–1796, the sisters undertook an ambitious concert tour of northern Germany, promoting Mozart’s music. The tour proved both artistically and financially successful, helping to enhance his reputation across Europe.
By the late 1790s, thanks to her persistence and strategic thinking, Constanze had stabilised her financial situation.
Meeting the Tenant Who Became Her Husband: Georg Nikolaus von Nissen
Georg Nikolaus Nissen; painting by Ferdinand Jagemann, 1809
Around 1797, in her mid-30s, Constanze began taking in boarders to supplement her income.
One of them was Georg Nikolaus von Nissen, a Danish diplomat and writer with a deep interest in music. The two grew close, and by September 1798 were living together as a couple.
In June 1809, they travelled to Pressburg (modern-day Bratislava) to marry.
Like her first marriage, this one was reportedly happy. Both of Mozart’s sons were fond of Nissen.
In 1810, the couple moved to Copenhagen, where they remained for a decade. After further travels, they settled in Salzburg – Mozart’s birthplace – in 1824. By then, Constanze was in her early sixties.
There, they began work on what would become one of the earliest major Mozart biographies.
How She and Her Second Husband Wrote the Definitive Mozart Biography
Nissen devoted years to the biography, drawing on family letters, interviews with contemporaries, and, above all, Constanze’s firsthand knowledge.
Wolfgang, Nannerl and Leopold Mozart
A key contribution came from Mozart’s sister Nannerl, who provided approximately 400 family letters. Although she and Constanze had not been close during Mozart’s lifetime, they reconnected in later years.
Nissen died on 24 March 1826 before completing the manuscript. Once again, Constanze stepped in – hiring Johann Heinrich Feuerstein to finish the work, much as she had arranged for the completion of the Requiem.
The biography was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig in 1828 and became enormously influential.
Constanze’s Final Years in Wolfgang’s Hometown of Salzburg
Constanze Mozart in 1802, portrait by Hans Hansen © Wikipedia
After Nissen’s death, Constanze remained in Salzburg.
Her sisters Aloysia and Sophie joined her there, and all three Weber sisters ultimately spent their final years as widows in the same city.
In later life, Constanze suffered from severe arthritis and became largely housebound. Even so, she maintained correspondence with her sons, with Nannerl – by then blind – and with the growing network of Mozart scholars seeking her insight.
Before her death, she and her sons donated the family’s collection of manuscripts, letters, and memorabilia to what would become the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg.
That bequest remains one of the most important archives in classical music.
Death and Burial
Tombstone of Constanze Mozart, cemetery of Sebastian Church, Salzburg
Constanze Mozart died on 6 March 1842 in Salzburg at the age of 80.
She was buried beside Georg Nikolaus von Nissen. She could not be buried alongside Mozart, who – like most middle-class Viennese of his time – had been placed in a common grave.
She had survived him by 51 years – and spent those years ensuring his legacy endured.
The Legacy of Constanze Mozart
Constanze Mozart has long been a controversial figure.
Nineteenth-century biographers, influenced in part by Mozart’s father Leopold – who never fully approved of the marriage – portrayed her as shallow, extravagant, and unreliable.
Modern scholars have pushed back on that characterisation. As feminist musicologist Eva Rieger noted in 1991, the charges levelled against Constanze – that she was a poor housekeeper, that she was flighty or frivolous, that she was too often ill, that Mozart was settling when he married her – dissolve under scrutiny.
A woman who bore six children in eight years, managed an unstable household income, and then rebuilt her life after being widowed at 29 was neither passive nor incompetent.
Today, her achievements are clearer: she preserved Mozart’s manuscripts, shaped his posthumous reputation, and laid the groundwork for modern Mozart scholarship.
If she contributed to certain myths, it was within the constraints of a society hostile to unmarried women – and in service of her family’s survival. At the same time, she safeguarded the very documents that later allowed those myths to be questioned.
The lucrative global legacy of Mozart today – the recordings, performances, scholarship – rests in no small part on decisions Constanze began making in the winter of 1791, when she was 29 years old, newly widowed, and left with little more than her last name and a pile of manuscripts.
Bach’s influence on Jazz
by Maureen Buja August 2nd, 2026
Let’s look at his influence not on his contemporaries, not on his students, but on 20th-century composers.
Elias Gottlob Haussmann: Johann Sebastian Bach, 1748 (Leipzig: Bach-Archiv)
Jazz gives us the opportunity to swing a solid beat. And that beat is what Baroque music is known for – what is sometimes called ‘sewing machine’ music – you start it and off it goes until it unwinds at the end. For jazz artists, Baroque music can be a springboard for improvisation (which was also important in Bach’s era, especially for organists) and for bending that rhythmic line.
Henry Brant took the idea of a Baroque toccata (a virtuoso work for keyboard or plucked string instrument) and swings it more than a little bit. One of the earliest of the Bach-meets-Jazz pieces, dating from the 1940s, the Jazz Toccata on a Bach Theme mixes a bit of Bach with a bit of Art Tatum piano style.
On the classical side of things, French pianist and composer Jacques Loussier (1934–2019) fell in love with Bach as a child. Starting with the Notebook for Anna Magdalena at age 11, he used it as a place to add his ‘own notes, expanding the harmonies, and playing around with that music’. When he started his fusion of jazz and Bach at the Paris Conservatoire in the 1950s, it was unique for its time. According to the story, at a competition at the conservatory, Loussier played a prelude by Bach, and when his memory failed, he improvised. He later said that he only followed a tradition, because musicians of the 18th century—including Bach—were great improvisers. It probably didn’t hurt that he was earning money on the side playing jazz in Paris bars at the time. Loussier, along with string bass player Pierre Michelot (who had played with Django Reinhardt and the Quintette du Hot Club de France) and percussionist Christian Garros, formed the Jacques Loussier Trio and took Bach on the road, using his music as a basis for their jazz improvisations.
Jacques Loussier Trio
Bach’s Trio Sonatas for Organ, BWV 525–530, are considered formidable organ works, written as training pieces for Bach’s oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. In the hands of the Trio Michael Spors, Bach’s Trio Sonata No. 2, BWV 526, is taken apart, put back together, improvised on, and generally changed while still being Bach.
Trio Michael Spors
German keyboard player and composer David Timm (b. 1969) formed the JazzDuo Timm/Brockelt with saxophonist Reiko Brockelt in 1991. On their 2004 album Visions, they applied a number of different styles to Bach, including swing and samba adaptations to create a new jazz Bach world.
Their swing adaptation of the monumental Toccata and Fugue in D minor takes Bach to a loose and danceable 1940s feel. It’s an amazing amalgam of two distinct styles, emphasised by the different voices of the organ and saxophone.
JazzDuo Timm/Brockelt
Dutch pianist and composer Lucie de Saint Vincent founded the Collectif Trytone to ‘break down the barriers between styles and traditions’. Their first album, Bach to Bach, was used by de Saint Vincent as a way of posing ‘questions about our humanity, the space between heaven and earth, and the relationship between our concrete existence and the realm of spirituality’. She draws on the idea of improvisation and how it contrasts with the modern idea of the set text. We can’t return to Bach’s sonic world, so why not bring him into ours?
The Collectif Trytone is directed by Lucie de Saint Vincent, with soprano Lucie Chartin, saxophonist Joao Driessen, bassist Mihail Ivanov, and Joan Terol Amigo on drums. Their musical synthesis brings together Baroque, Classical and jazz ideas.
Collectif Trytone
In their 2019 album Bach Today, flautist Stefan Keller and percussionist Beda Ehrensperger ‘play Bach and beyond’, as the cover says. The Bach of the title isn’t just J.S. Bach, but also his son C.P.E. Bach, and the two players create a new world of the ‘Baroque Classical’.
In 1959, a new wave of music came up from Brazil and changed jazz forever. This New Wave, or Bossa Nova sound, credited to Antônio Carlos Jobim (music) and Vinicius de Moraes (words), was based on samba, but without dance steps. It has syncopation but doesn’t swing like American jazz; it is most notable for each voice playing a different rhythm.
On his 1990 album WorldBeat Bach, clarinettist Richard Stoltzman took Bach and placed him in many different international musical styles, including samba, bossa nova, tango, West African, flamenco, calypso, bolero, and gospel. Although the melody is presented in a fairly straightforward manner, it’s always susceptible to that infectious beat below it.
Richard Stoltzman (photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco)
Composer Jeremy Wall takes a familiar work by Bach, Jesu, meine Freude, and gives it a slow tango feel.
American vocalist and jazz man Ward Swingle created his vocal group the Swingle Singers in France in 1962, first as session singers backing pop stars such as Charles Aznavour and Edith Piaf, and then they discovered Bach. As a sight-reading exercise, they vocalised Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and discovered Bach’s swing possibilities. Their first album Jazz Sébastien Bach started as a private gift for friends and ended up being awarded the 1964 Grammy for Best Performance by a Chorus and Best New Artist. This was followed 5 years later by Jazz Sébastien Bach Vol. 2. This first group was disbanded when Swingle moved from France to England, and reformed again when Swingle moved to the US in 1984. The group is still active and, with its distinctive sound, has featured in many films and TV shows.
Swingle Singers
Jazz pianist and composer Brad Mehldau (b. 1970) studied jazz and contemporary music in New York at The New School and was a member of saxophonist Joshua Redman’s quartet in the mid-1990s. Following commissions to write music inspired by Bach, he started touring with these in 2015.
In his piece After Bach, Mehldau plays with Bach’s metre: 3/8 time is turned into the infinitely more complex 20/16, and other time signatures. Odd-metre Bach, playing with the established rondo form, and shifts of tonality take Bach firmly into the 21st century.
Brad Mehldau, 2021 (photo by Harald Krichel)
We’ll return to the Swingle Singers for our last bit of Bach. From their 2007 recording Beauty and the Beat Box, the Swingle Singers were joined by beatboxer Shlomo and the beatboxing choir, Vocal Orchestra. This truly takes Bach to the 21st century.
Bach hides in many places and he’s not only confined to classical music. Jazz, pop, rock and every other genre can see a bit of Bach everywhere. Where’s your favourite Bach?
Friday, July 24, 2026
Where Chopin Meets Europe 22nd International “Chopin and His Europe”
From Bicentenary Celebration to International Landmark
The origins of this exceptional festival date back to celebrations of Chopin’s 200th birthday in 2010. Its creator and artistic director, Stanisław Leszczyński, is a music theorist who specialises in the analysis of interpretation.
He was head of the classical music department at the Polskie Nagrania record label (1979–1981), programme consultant for the Warsaw Philharmonic (1988–1991), director of Polish Radio Music Recordings (1991–1994), and co-founder and first director of the S-1 (now Witold Lutosławski) Concert Studio, a prestigious new music centre in Warsaw.
In the years 1998–2003, he was deputy artistic director of the Polish National Opera, and since 2004, he has been deputy director for Musical Education, Recordings and Concerts at the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw.
The Fryderyk Chopin Institute (Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina) was created in 2001 as a research facility to promote the life and works of Frédéric Chopin. It has hosted the Chopin and His Europe Festival since its inception.
Fryderyk Chopin Institute logo
6th Chopin and His Europe (Nehring, Zdunik, Groblewski)
More Than a Chopin Festival
The festival collaborates with the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Polish National Opera, and Polish Radio II. While the International Chopin Competition, also organised by the Chopin Institute, is exclusively devoted to the work of Chopin, the Chopin and His Europe Festival presents Chopin’s music within the broader cultural and musical landscape of nineteenth-century Europe.
Essentially, the festival places Chopin within a broader musical lineage. It explores composers who influenced his musical language, his contemporaries, and the generations of composers and performers who inherited his artistic vision.
Fryderyk Chopin Institute, Warsaw
The Sound of Chopin’s Time
An additional defining emphasis is placed on historically informed performances. A good many concerts are performed on period instruments or faithful replicas. The Chopin Institute houses historic pianos by Pleyel, Érard, and Broadwood alongside replicas of instruments originally made by Buchholtz and Conrad Graf.
Chopin Museum, Warsaw
Warsaw Chopin Museum
A Festival of International Excellence
The 22nd Chopin and His Europe Festival presents a more compact programme than in previous years, but it still features 16 concerts over two weeks and one day. It will feature major symphony orchestras from Canada, the United States, and Europe, specifically the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal.
The orchestras are joined by recent prize winners of the Chopin Competition. Eric Lu won the most recent Chopin Competition; Bruce Liu was a previous winner; and Tomasz Ritter won the Chopin Competition on Period Instruments. Kevin Chen was a second-prize winner, and Tianyao Lyu placed fourth.
The festival also features leading pianists, including Sir András Schiff, Mikhail Pletnev, Alexandre Kantorow, and Víkingur Ólafsson, and the outstanding violinist Bomsori Kim. The great master of the harp, Xavier de Maistre, will perform with his ensemble, and recitals by Zitong Wang and Vincent Ong are also scheduled.
Chamber music concerts feature Anna Geniushene and Lukas Geniušas, as well as third-place Chopin Competition laureate Martín García García performing with violinist Chouchane Siranossian. The festival will also feature a performance by Belgian cellist Roel Dieltiens and the pianist Frank Braley.
Chopin and His Europe Festival
Chopin in Context
The Chopin and His Europe Festival has made Warsaw a meeting ground for artists from across the world. The combination of scholarly research, historically informed performances, and electrifying musicianship has established it as one of Europe’s most distinctive classical music festivals. Interlude will be on site; check back for frequent updates and reports.
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
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