New Mozart work? Yep, and Bach Festival Society’s bringing it to Orlando

Central Florida music fans will get to hear a “new” classical work soon — from Mozart, a composer who’s been dead for more than two centuries.

Reacting to breaking Mozart news — a phrase one doesn’t expect to encounter — the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park has made a late addition to its Nov. 3 concert in Steinmetz Hall at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando. On the program will be a “lost” piece by Mozart that was just rediscovered in a German library last month.

“It is not every day that a new Mozart single drops,” jokes artistic director John V. Sinclair. “In all seriousness, it is an honor and a privilege to be among the first organizations to play this lost Mozart composition.”

The work, about 12 minutes in length, was found in the Music Library of the Leipzig Municipal Libraries and announced to the world as a Mozart composition on Sept. 19. Researchers were updating the Köchel Catalog, the definitive listing of the works of Mozart, who died in 1791 at age 35. The catalog is updated every few decades to account for any discoveries and scholarly revisions.

What made this particular discovery so exciting to music fans was the fact the music exists in its entirety. The work — not in Mozart’s handwriting, but created by a copyist, probably his sister, Sinclair said — was labeled “Serenade in C,” but is being referred to as “Ganz kleine Nachtmusik,” or “A Very Little Night Music” — a play on Mozart’s famous “Little Night Music.”

“You don’t find complete works very often,” Sinclair said. “You usually find fragments.”

Bits and pieces do show up from time to time because, after Mozart’s untimely death, his wife Constance sold as much as she could of his writings to raise money for the cash-strapped family.

“A Very Little Night Music,” which consists of seven short movements, is written for a strings trio of two violinists and a cellist. At the Bach Festival Society concert, it will be played by Routa Kroumovitch-Gomez and Joni Roos on violin, with David Bjella on cello.

The timing couldn’t have been more auspicious: Mozart’s final composition, his Requiem in D minor, already was on his program. Scholars have determined the newly discovered piece is an early work, likely composed in the late 1760s when Mozart was between ages 10 and 13.

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The style and complexity of the composing help them date “A Very Little Night Music,” Sinclair said, but another clue is that the music was attributed to “Wolfgang Mozart.” He didn’t adopt “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart” as his signature until his teen years.

Sinclair was drawn to the idea of showcasing early and late Mozart compositions in the same concert: “It’s unique, and we thought, ‘Why not juxtapose that?'”

“A Very Little Night Music” had its world premiere at the Leipzig Opera on Sept. 21. Fans, eager for new music, formed a queue that would have stretched the length of four U.S. football fields, according to media reports.

Sinclair did some online detective work to uncover the sheet music and found it “just by luck,” he said. Orlando audiences will benefit by being among the first in the world to hear the piece played live.

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Besides the Mozart works, the program also includes Jean Sibelius’s beloved classical mainstay “Finlandia” and a new composition by Ted Ricketts, “Songs of War and Peace.” Tickets start at $35 for the concert, 3 p.m. Nov. 3, and are available at drphillipscenter.org .

Sinclair thinks audience members will like what they hear in the “new” Mozart.

“I found it amusing,” he said. “There are some pretty little things. You can tell he was having fun.”

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