Mozart Project 2

Elyane Laussade is a graduate of Juilliard School, New York. She has delighted audiences on 5 continents with her imaginative and strongly individual playing and is regarded as one of Australia's finest pianists. In the second of three concerts with the Melbourne Musicians directed by Frank Pam, she will play Mozart's Piano Concerto No.19 in F major, K.459. It is the most uniformly cheerful of Mozart's concertos and the brilliance and beauty of the score suggest what Mozart must have been like as a pianist: the consummate master of the keyboard. There is also some particularly luminous writing for the wind instruments.

The program includes a rare performance of a Symphony in F major by Dittersdorf, a friend of Haydn and Mozart with whom he played string quartets.

Two works by Haydn are featured: the premiere of 12 German Dances, and the delightful Symphony No.55 in E flat major, "The Schoolmaster". It is notable for its humour, its irresistible tunes and the beautiful writing for the wind instruments. Its centrepiece is the unusual slow movement, with a rhythmic theme depicting the strict, pedantic finger-wagging schoolmaster, and a series of flowing variations showing him shattered by love. The Finale, a racy rondo, contains many delightful surprises in Haydn's inimitable manner.