Mozart & Poulenc

Where would we be without the achievements of previous generations? All the composers on this programme understood that we are always building on the past. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for example, himself a brilliant violinist, used what he had learned in Italy in his own violin concertos. Valeriy Sokolov introduces himself as soloist with the A major Concerto K. 219, in the finale of which a veritable «alla turca» breaks out. Francis Poulenc also understood this, however, and in his humorously brilliant Sinfonietta of 1948 he proves that he really had received «Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands». And Richard Wagner also knew it when, full of appreciation for Christoph Willibald Gluck, he draped the latter’s overture to «Iphigénie en Aulide» in the musical raiment of Romanticism. It is entirely fitting, then, that Victor Jacob previously came to the Tonkunstler Orchestra’s attention as conductor of «Orchestrascope», a (film) music project for young people: a meeting of the generations.