Classicalite was nothing but glee when the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg announced it was finally bringing Wolfie's violin and viola to the States. Whereas New York audiences only got to hear his violin, Boston got both the violin and the viola.
And in the case of Classicalite friend Anastasia Tsioulcas, she actually got to hear and hold Mozart's strings.
I just got to hold Mozart's violin & viola: quite a thrill. Pic from their undisclosed location in Boston... https://t.co/uYoK7aXDpo
— Anastasia Tsioulcas (@anastasiat) June 11, 2013
Before we get too jealous, though, we remind ourselves that Mozart's instruments (if indeed they really were Mozart's instruments) weren't particularly exceptional--certainly not by the Strad standards rented out to today's virtuosi. The violin, crafted by the Klotz family luthiers in Bavaria, was most probably the instrument Wolfie used to perform his own concerti. His viola, on the other hand, is an Italian viol from around the same period. Its maker, however, is still unknown.
As you can tell in this Greg Shea-shot video from WGBH's Fraser Performance Studio in Boston, featuring Daniel Stepner and Anne Black, Wolfie's instruments were much softer, their tone a lot less brilliant. Of course, Mozart, himself, is generally thought to have played them, and as Tsioulcas duly noted for NPR, the instruments do "force the audience to lean in to appreciate them."
The finale here is the cut-time rondeau from 1783's String Duo No. 1 in G, K. 423--the first of two Mozart composed to complete Michael Haydn's set of six commission for the Archbishop Colloredo.
