Watch World Premiere Of Newly Discovered Mozart Piano Piece

A recently discovered Mozart piano piece will be performed by Seong-Jin Cho at Salzburg’s Mozarteum Foundation, and open the 2021 Mozartwoche Festival, to celebrate the composer’s 265th birthday. The world premiere of Mozart’s Allegro in D will be streamed (excluding Austria and Korea), as part of a full piano and lecture recital including other works by Mozart, on Deutsche Grammophon’s online platform DG Stage on 27 January 2021 at 6pm (CET). Seong-Jin Cho’s eSingle recording of Mozart’s Allegro in D will be released on 29 January 2021.

“It is a great honour to be invited to give the premiere of a formerly unknown work by Mozart in the city where he was born and where it may have been written,” noted Seong-Jin Cho. “I’m delighted that, thanks to DG Stage among others, many people from around the world will be able to hear this wonderful piece for the first time during my Mozartwoche recital. I really hope that many others will also discover its charms by listening to my Deutsche Grammophon eSingle recording.”

“Mozart’s music brings us solace in difficult times”

This year’s planned Mozartwoche was cancelled due to the lockdown but the organisers of the annual festival decided to celebrate Mozart’s 265th birthday with an abbreviated programme specially adapted for online streaming. “The world premiere of the Allegro in D is the icing on the birthday cake for our beloved Mozart,” explained Rolando Villazón, Artistic Director of the Mozartwoche. “I am thrilled it will be presented by the outstanding pianist Seong-Jin Cho, who has such a marvellous feeling for the tender humanity of Mozart’s melodies. Mozart’s music brings us solace in difficult times and is the shining light that lets us look forward to the time when audiences and performers will be able to meet again. For now, we have the chance to share the Mozartwoche experience online and witness a special moment in music history with this world premiere.”

”Once-in a-lifetime performance”

Dr Clemens Trautmann, President Deutsche Grammophon, observed, “The diligent work of our partners and friends means we have the chance to hear an incredibly rare Mozart world premiere. Rolando Villazón and the Mozarteum Foundation deserve our special thanks, and we congratulate Seong-Jin Cho on this once-in a-lifetime performance. In close collaboration with the Mozarteum Foundation, Unitel and many additional media outlets as well as our audio streaming partners, Deutsche Grammophon is proud to connect audiences worldwide and celebrate Mozart’s genius in a genuinely historic moment.”

The Allegro in D probably dates from early 1773

The Allegro in D K626b/16, preserved on both sides of a single manuscript sheet in Mozart’s hand, probably dates from early 1773, and was completed towards the end of its seventeen-year-old composer’s third tour of Italy or soon after his return home to Salzburg. After being passed from the estate of the composer’s youngest son into the collection of Austrian civil servant and amateur musician Aloys Fuchs the score was, perhaps mistakenly, given away. It was owned in the late 1800s by an antiquarian book and art dealer in Vienna and brought to auction in 1899. The score was noted in Köchel’s catalogue of the composer’s works but escaped scholarly scrutiny.

In 2018 the “unknown” Allegro was offered for sale to the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation by the family of a French-Dutch engineer who had bought the manuscript from a dealer in Paris in the late 1920s. The Foundation’s staff confirmed that the piano piece was by Mozart and Allegro in D will be published on the same day as the world premiere on 27 January 2021.

Watch the world premiere of Mozart’s Allegro in D performed by Seong-Jin Cho on 27 January 2021 at 6pm (CET) streamed (excluding Austria and Korea) on DG Stage.

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