Mozart: Genius for Hire

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2024

Music

Summary

The story of how the composer broke free from the constraints of court employment to embrace a risky life as Vienna's pioneering freelancer, defying tradition to compose, teach and perform on his own terms. The tale is told through letters between Mozart and his father Leopold, read by Matthew Broome and David Harewood

Review

David Butcher

There’s a brisk trio of Mozart programmes on Sky Arts over the coming days, ahead of the new drama based on Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, starting next week.

On Wednesday (9pm) there’s the self-explanatory Mozart’s Sister, while on Thursday (9pm), Mozart’s Women is a concert of his music inspired by the women in his life. This first documentary delves into Wolfgang and his father Leopold’s letters to chart the way Mozart broke away from courtly patronage to work as a freelance, his creativity flourishing whether or not he managed to make ends meet.

Some viewers will breathe a sigh of relief that (unlike BBC Two’s Mozart: Rise of a Genius) this trusts its audience and trusts the music. There are no periwigged actors miming at the piano or pretending to conduct in a Salzburg salon.

We get generous stretches of music and real musicians and singers, including soprano Danielle de Niese, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and violinist Gil Shaham. The result gets across how Mozart “really hustled,” as Shaham puts it, but also very much wrote from the heart.

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rolenameDirectorDhivya Kate Chetty

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Released on

2024-01-01

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