“A happy medium” – this is how Mozart described his piano concertos written in Vienna in 1782, seeing in them an ideal balance between accessibility and refinement. A happy connection can also be an instrumental one. This time, the programme features works written for very similar forces: oboes or clarinets, horns, and strings. The Wrocław Baroque Orchestra will take listeners on a journey from the French classicism of François-Joseph Gossec to the mature style of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The solo parts in Mozart’s works will be performed on the pianoforte by Olga Pashchenko – a versatile artist who also reaches for organ and harpsichord repertoire.

François-Joseph Gossec, today performed less frequently than Mozart, was one of the most important figures of his time. He composed operas, symphonies, string quartets, and choral works, and his activity helped shape the development of music in France in the second half of the 18th and the early 19th centuries. He outlived all three Viennese classics – Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven – dying in 1829 at the age of ninety-five. His Symphony in E flat major, Op. 12 No. 5, published in 1769 as part of a set of six symphonies, is a three-movement work for a modest ensemble: two clarinets, two horns, and strings. Its transparent texture and careful attention to the colour of the wind instruments represent the classical idiom in its early, elegant form. By contrast, the Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major, KV 271, composed in 1777 in Salzburg, is among the most original works of the young Mozart. Its subtitle commemorates the pianist Victoire Jenamy, daughter of the dancer and ballet master Jean-Georges Noverre. Here, the composer broke with genre conventions: instead of a traditional orchestral introduction, after a sharp chord from the ensemble the piano immediately enters, presenting the main musical idea. The concerto’s formal scope and inventiveness led Alfred Brendel to call it “one of the wonders of the world”, and Alfred Einstein to describe it as “Mozart’s Eroica”.

The second part of the event will open with the Divertimento in E flat major, KV 113, written in 1771 in Milan during Mozart’s second journey to Italy, connected with the premiere of the pastoral opera Ascanio in Alba. In this four-movement work, the wind instruments – oboes and horns – are often treated as soloists, while the strings take on an accompanying role. The latest work on the programme is the Piano Concerto No. 12 in A major, KV 414, composed in Vienna in the autumn of 1782. It formed part of a set of three concertos about which Mozart wrote that they were “happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid”. The light, graceful character of the piece, however, conceals a personal touch: in the slow movement, the composer wove in a quotation from the overture to Johann Christian Bach’s opera La calamita de’ cuori, paying tribute to his recently deceased mentor.