Musicalings

This weekend we're performing two concerts of Mozart at Conner Prairie, our summer home just a few miles up the road from Indianapolis.  In honor of the Wolfie, here's my favorite scene from Amadeus, which also happens to be one of my favorite movie scenes period:



It's barely longer than a minute, but it's quite possibly the best summation of why Mozart specifically, and music in general, is just so powerful.  Because an old man, reduced to a shadow of his former self, forgotten in his self-imposed exile in a senior home, with his best days behind him, can still recall, to the note, the most beautiful melody he's ever heard.  And when he recalls it, he smiles uncontrollably, lighting up like a man a quarter his age. He doesn't really know why, but this phrase - this song - touched him all those years ago and never left him.

The music featured in this scene is from Mozart's Gran Partita, a beautiful work for wind orchestra and I'll be in the Chicago Burbs this Sunday to hear the Chicago Symphony perform it at Ravinia. 

So stay tuned for a report on that!

(And another cool connection - the man playing Salieri, the old man in that scene, is Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham.  And he narrates the Lincoln Portrait with the ISO at our Opening Night Gala on September 26!)