A work Mozart wrote for a king, but which the cash-strapped composer sold “for a song” to a music publisher, will be featured during “Chamber Music Masterpieces,” a concert by the Daytona Solisti String Quartet.
The concert, the second in Daytona Solisti’s Winter Festival celebrating the group’s 20th anniversary, also will include a Mozart serenade featured in the 1984 Oscar-winning biopic “Amadeus,” and Orlando-based guitarist Miles McConnell will perform classical works and Irish tunes.
“Chamber Music Masterpieces” will be presented at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 16, at Port Orange Presbyterian Church, 4662 S. Clyde Morris Blvd., Port Orange, where Solisti is in residence. A $15 donation is requested at the door. For more information call 386-562-5423 or go online at daytonasolisti.com.
Composed of professional musicians from throughout Central Florida and Northeast Florida, Daytona Solisti performs the music of the master composers of the 18th and 19th centuries. The Solisti quartet will perform Mozart’s String Quartet in D major, K. 575, and his serenade “Eine Kleine Nachtmusic” (German for “a little night music”).
Along with his arrangements of Irish tunes, McConnell will perform the works of early 19th-century guitar virtuoso and composer Mauro Giuliani, mid-20th-century Spanish composer Joaquín Turina, and contemporary French classical guitarist and composer Arnaud Dumond.
Mozart, a child prodigy who played piano, violin, harp and many other instruments, performed in Berlin in 1789 for Friedrich Wilhelm II, the King of Prussia and an accomplished amateur cellist. That performance led Wilhelm to commission six string quartet works from the 33-year-old composer.
Back in Vienna, Mozart commenced work on the pieces, but ill health and financial difficulties led him to abandon the commission after completing only his String Quartet in D major and two other works. He sold those three works to a music publisher, writing to a friend that “I have now been forced to give away my quartets (that exhausting labor) for a mere song, simply in order to have cash in hand merely to meet my present difficulties.”
Nevertheless, said musicologist Orrin Howard of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, “Mozart operated on the happiest, most lighthearted of levels” when composing the String Quartet in D major and the other two “Prussian Quartets,” creating “ebullient, graceful music with amazing ease.”
Mozart wrote “A Little Night Music” in 1787, four years before his death in 1791 at age 35. The work was not published until 1827, and music historians note “A Little Night Music” was not the title that Mozart gave the piece. Rather, the serenade was given that name from a reference made in the composer’s notes. Musicologists agree it is likely Mozart’s most famous work, leading it to be featured in the film “Amadeus.” Howard calls the serenade “one of the composer’s most felicitous ‘little’ pieces . . . a bon-bon of the most delectable kind.”
Both Mozart works will be performed by the Daytona Solisti String Quartet, which includes violinists Olga Kolpakova and Susan Pitard Acree, violist Zoriy Zinger and cellist Joseph Corporon.
Miles McConnell holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Guitar Performance from the University of Wisconsin Madison, and has studied guitar extensively at other universities, institutions and workshops.
Along with performances in Spain and Scotland, McConnell recently returned from a year living in Northern Ireland, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in Arts Management at Queen’s University Belfast. During his time there, he was a featured soloist at the Ards International Guitar Festival in Newtownards, Northern Ireland.
Daytona Solisti was founded in 2005 by Acree after she moved to Daytona Beach from Atlanta. She previously played violin in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for 22 years, performing at New York’s Carnegie Hall, London, Chicago, Paris and other cities.
Daytona Solisti presents an annual concert series performing as the Daytona Solisti Chamber Orchestra, the Daytona Solisti Chamber Players and the Daytona Solisti String Quartet. Daytona Solisti also presents solo performances by pianist Dr. Michael Rickman, and concerts by the Rickman-Acree-Corporon Piano Trio.
Rickman was originally scheduled to perform at Solisti’s Feb. 16 concert, but he is recovering from a recent car accident and is currently unable to perform.
Solisti’s final Winter Festival concert will feature the Daytona Solisti Chamber Orchestra performing “Romancing the Strings” at 3:30 p.m. Sunday March 23, at the Port Orange Presbyterian Church. The concert will include Dvorak’s Serenade in E, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Op. 11, and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, featuring violinist Olga Kolpakova.
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