Slovakia pays tribute to genius of Mozart

A visitor to Mozarthaus gazes at the composer. photo: AP

The entire world is joining Austria in marking the 250th anniversary of the greatest composer of the Classical Age in yearlong celebrations - The Year of Mozart.

"The anniversary is an occasion to linger intensively over his personality," said Susanne Ranetzky, director of Austrian Cultural Forum.

The Forum, along with Bratislava's Mozart Community and local as well as foreign institutions bring the genius to Slovaks. The composer's works and lectures on his miraculous talent make up a substantial part of this year's cultural programme.

In mid-January the 9th annual Mozart Week started. Running until March 26, the event offers concerts, lectures, a film and an exhibition.

"It's called Mozart Week [after a similar event in Salzburg] even though it runs for a few months. It's because its programme is richer this year," Pavol Polák, president of the Mozart Community, which is a member of the International Foundation Mozarteum in Salzburg, told The Slovak Spectator.

The festival brings famous as well as lesser-known works from Mozart's abundant repertoire to Slovak ears. Last week it premiered in Slovakia the composer's Serenade in B Major (Gran Partita), K 361, a work for 12 brass instruments and contrabass. "It's one of the best," Polák said.

Throughout February, Mozart Week invites the leading Škampovo Kvarteto from the Czech Republic to play Mozart's string quartets and Austrian Professor Otto Biba to lecture on "Mozart's way of composing". The Klassische Kapelle Wien, members of the Vienna Philharmonic, will close the festival.

Austrian Cultural Forums around the world, Ranetzky says, are celebrating Mozart's anniversary. The Cultural Forum in Bratislava offers a rich yearlong medley of thematic events - All Around Mozart. The title embraces exhibitions, film screenings, afternoon concerts, lectures and other events. It invites Slovak as well as Austrian artists to perform the composer's works and in summer plans to transport a bit of the spirit of Mozart from Vienna, within Wienmozart 2006. Vienna was the place that best stimulated the composer's creative talents.

Altogether, Mozart visited and stayed in around 200 European towns. "Europe and the entire world is looking for and visiting him now," the Austrian Cultural Forum's director Ranetzky said.

She added that Mozart is celebrated in Slovakia and around the world every year.

"We celebrate Mozart in Slovakia each year with the Bratislava Mozart Community and other foreign as well as local cultural institutions. When we look at it this way, Mozart is ever-present in Slovakia, this year obviously a bit more intensively," Ranetzky said.