Prepare for the digital release of a never-before-heard composition by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, recently uncovered at a library in Germany. The work, which is being called “A Very Little Night Music” (“Ganz Kleine Nachtmusik” in German) and is officially known as Serenade in C K 648, will be released this month in three separate 12-minute versions. Two chamber versions of the piece will be out Oct. 11, followed by an orchestra version on Oct. 18.
Researchers for the International Mozarteum Foundation were compiling the latest edition of the Köchel catalogue, the authoritative survey of Mozart’s oeuvre, when they uncovered a copy of “A Very Little Night Music” in the Carl Ferdinand Becker collection of the Municipal Music Library in Leipzig. The piece dates back to the mid-to-late 1760s, when Mozart was in his early teens. It consists of seven miniature movements for string trio, which were performed in public for the first time on Sept. 19 by the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, Austria.
Perhaps the most authentic of the three recordings was captured in the Viennese Hall of the International Mozarteum Foundation. The performance features violinists Leonhard Baumgartner and Margarita Pochebut, both still teenagers as Mozart was when he wrote the piece, in addition to double bassist Svenja Dose and harpsichordist Oscar Jockel. A video of their performance will premiere Oct. 12 on STAGE+.
“The huge amount of attention that the publication of the new Mozart piece has attracted worldwide shows the unbroken fascination with the greatest composer of all time,” says Rainer Heneis, CEO of the International Mozarteum Foundation. “Thanks to the outstanding work of our colleagues at the scientific competence centre, this newly discovered composition could be verified as part of their ongoing research on the new Köchel catalogue.”
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