Diana and i were never fond of much of the music of Mozart. Indeed a number of others including Busoni and Glenn Gould demonstrated by the rarity of performances of Mozart’s output what little he wrote that was memorable. Gould went so far as to say that the problem with Mozart was not that he died too young but, rather, he continued to write far too long after he had run out of ideas.
My performances of the C Major Concerto for Flute and Harp were both because it was the only work he wrote with harp and, as Diana would put it, “how disgusting some of the things are that humans will do for a few bucks.” Having stipulated that little, on more than one occasion i have acknowledged the existence of a few nice measures in the opening of the first movement of the Concerto for Clarinet (repeated once or twice after that original statement) and for the “bassoon lick” in Le Nozze di Figaro (Marriage of Figaro) Overture.
To save you a few clicks or a trip to a shelf somewhere, below is the first bassoon lick (in dominant; the other is in tonic going into the coda.)
(the lead-in – not to be confused
with “get the lead [Pb] out?”)
And the lick itself (next page)
In fairness to Diana, when i brought this bit to her attention she pointed out that, having heard her father play with the Detroit Symphony as a toddler and Rochester Philharmonic from early youth through young adulthood, she never even noticed that the bassoon snaked around in this passage.
On an ever so slightly more personal level, Diana’s path crossed with Wolfgang’s in 1947 when she lived in Linz and would spend time at Mozart’s former home in Salzburg playing, mostly jazz, on his piano. In her collection of piano music were many German editions of some of the piano music of Mozart given to her by locals in exchange for cigarettes — since they were akin to platinum and she didn’t smoke.
Still in Diana’s collection is the Rollei (Rolleiflex) camera obtained the same way. She was given top-of-the-line Agfa film to use in the camera. Note in the 1947 black and white photo of her at the gate near Mozart’s home, hanging around her neck is the Rollei.
Back to Mozart’s former home, the Austrians and Germans enjoyed her jazz so much that they gave her many more souvenirs and artifacts. In October 1968 when she returned to show Tom “the scene of the crimes,” she was surprised by the red velvet rope around the piano and the sign warning against taking photos. The photo of Tom with the piano was taken on her “trusty Rollei.”
