One down, 26 to go. “Mozart’s Piano” is a series of concerts by the Aurora Orchestra at Kings Place, based around a complete cycle of Mozart’s piano concertos. It started last night, and will reach its conclusion in 2020.
It was Peter Millican of the Kings Place Music Foundation who first presented the idea of a Mozart piano concerto cycle to the orchestra. And – as is Aurora’s highly successful and original way – they were determined not to place the concertos in standard concert programmes, but to create a series which would develop themes, and contain bold juxtapositions. For example the second concert in the series, in March, will have Mozart’s travels to Georgian London as the pretext for a performance of Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King. Several of the concerts are also followed by a “lock-in” session, targeting people much closer in age to the orchestra’s members than the typical average audience for classical music.
