THE MOZART EFFECT

The composer in his time, and ours.

- JAMES WOOD

Patrick Mackie’s “Mozart in Motion” deftly reframes familiar pieces.

Music has its seasons, and people have their needs. At some point in the autumn of 1979, I became obsessed with a few bars of Mozart. I was thirteen, fundamentally cheerful but convinced I was fundamentally melancholy, and ravenous for all the music I could get my hands on, especially music that made me tearful. My father, a man who in later life would think nothing of driving forty miles on his own to hear Bach or Beethoven, had recently seen the English pianist Clifford Curzon in concert, playing Mozart’s last piano concerto, No. 27 (K. 595). I didn’t know the piece, but I knew about Curzon. My father collected pianists and their performances. Curzon had studied with Artur Schnabel and Wanda Landowska, and, above all, Curzon was English, and in those days you could feel almost patriotic about famous English musicians.