Lucerne Festival 2021 Opening Concert
Mozart/Schubert

Finally, a beginning. On the night before the Prague premiere, Mozart composed the overture to *Don Giovanni*, the “opera of all operas.” But this beginning already foreshadows the end—the downfall, the descent into hell of the “punished libertine,” the amoral hero whom women are mad about. “I saw fiery demons reaching out their glowing claws from the depths of the night,” wrote the Romantic author E. T. A. Hoffmann, who, out of reverence for Mozart, called himself Amadeus, but this is an abysmal prelude. What a beginning! When has a symphony ever begun like Mozart’s G-minor Symphony—restless, quiet, almost secretive, without the slightest hint of celebration or fanfare? Was this music for a future age? For the next generation, to which Franz Schubert in Vienna belonged? Schubert, however, focused entirely on the sunny side of life and the good spirits of music in his Sixth Symphony: C major, Viennese nonchalance, carefully crafted delight, playful ideas, and a closeness to Italian opera buffa. Through the night toward the light.