Two new Mozart pieces performed

 

Two newly discovered pieces of music written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a child have been performed in the Austrian city of his birth, Salzburg.

The piano pieces had long been in the archive of the International Mozarteum Foundation but only recently were they identified as compositions by Mozart.

The music was played on Mozart's own piano at a house where he lived from 1773-1780, and which is now a museum.

Posthumous discoveries of Mozart works are rare but not unknown.

In January, a piece by Mozart that had lain undiscovered in a French library for years had its first performance.

The two new pieces are the first movement of the concerto in G, molto allegro, and a prelude in G.

Pianist Florian Birsak plays one of the newly-identified pieces

They were discovered in a collection of music compiled by Mozart's father, Leopold.

They were unsigned - but now researchers have identified them as works by Mozart himself - written when he was just seven or eight years old.

Mozart wrote more than 600 known pieces of music before his death in 1791 at the age of 35.

He began composing at the age of five and his works include operas, chamber music, choral pieces and piano concertos.

An official at the International Mozarteum Foundation told the Associated Press news agency that the compositions to be played on Sunday were "substantial pieces" composed before Mozart's 10th birthday.

Source: BBC