Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Eighteenth-century music might seem tame by today's standards, but the London-based Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment demonstrates that there were plenty of bold strokes in the music of Mozart, Haydn and C.P.E. Bach. Hear the ensemble in concert in St. Paul.

In Mozart's final opera, an entire city burns to save a single love affair. Though written on demand, to humor a preening monarch, the score is Mozart at his best — shot through with startling innovations and great beauty.

Isabel Bayrakdarian and Ana Maria Martinez star in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, an opera with a slapstick surface that hides deeply emotional roots. The production is from Houston Grand Opera.

Is Don Giovanni the greatest opera of them all, as some have suggested? That's hard to say, but Mozart's brilliant combination of stark human tragedy and realistic comedy features music of limitless genius, and a drama that lives up to the score.

Born nearly 100 years apart, Mozart and Mahler shared a knack for writing transcendent music under stress. Live from the Mostly Mozart Festival, hear Mozart's 40th Symphony, filled with pride and pain, and Mahler's ode to eternity, The Song of the Earth.

Deceptively complex, Cosí fan tutte is a comic farce that often leaves romantically inclined listeners more than a little bit queasy. The libretto springs plenty of jokes, but Mozart's music tells you to hold on to your heart — you never know which way the romantic winds might blow.

Many have called Don Giovanni the finest opera ever composed. Mozart's classic is a brilliant combination of stark human tragedy and touching comedy, set to music of limitless genius. It's heard in a new production from Houston Grand Opera.

The brilliant soprano Anna Netrebko stars in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, an opera with a slapstick surface that hides deeply emotional roots. The production is from the Salzburg Festival.

Mozart's La finta semplice tells a sophisticated story of adult love, romantic deception and backstabbing — and he composed it when he was just 12 years old! It comes to us from the Salzburg Festival.

Mozart's masterpiece Cosi fan tutte is billed as a comedy, but it often leaves romantically inclined listeners feeling just a little bit queasy. It comes to us from the Salzburg Festival, in a production featuring the Vienna Philharmonic.

Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio is the opera the Emperor supposedly said had, "too many notes!" You can count them yourself in a production from the Salzburg Festival, in the composer's hometown.

In the spirit of mixing and matching music on MP3 players, Performance Today mixes a set of four short pieces, back to back, by Benjamin Britten, J.S. Bach, Mozart and Richard Strauss.

Sir Roger Norrington joins NPR's Fred Child in Salzburg for Mozart's birthday celebration. He conducts a selection of Mozart masterpieces, including the slow movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G Minor and the famous duet "Bei Maennern" from the opera The Magic Flute.

NPR's Fred Child hosts Performance Today from Salzburg, Austria, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart. The celebration includes performances from the Juilliard Quartet and Shai Wosner.

Much fuss has been made over how much Mozart hated having to write mostly church music during his teenage years as an organist in Salzburg. And much of the music is ordinary. But these selections helped earn him a memorial at Mozartplatz.

Renowned Mozart scholar Neal Zaslaw explores the composer's early years. And we hear performances of three Mozart symphonies: Symphony No. 11, Symphony No. 35 and the closing movement from the Symphony, K. 96.

Founded in 1978, the Orchestra of St. Luke's has earned a reputation as one of America's foremost chamber orchestras. At Carnegie Hall, conductor David Zinman leads the ensemble in a program that contrasts the music of 20th-century Polish composer Henryk Gorecki with the 18th-century genius of Mozart.

The adventurous Pacifica Quartet approaches Mozart string quartets as if they were miniature operas. The group taps into the lyrical and dramatic sides of Mozart's so-called "Dissonance" quartet in the studios of WGBH in Boston.

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter has been making her way through all of Mozart's major violin works. She stopped by the studio, with her longtime pianist and collaborator Lambert Orkis, to play selections from Mozart's Violin Sonatas.

Hear commentator Rob Kapilow demonstrate how Mozart sets up our expectations but takes us in unpredictable directions in the String Quintet in G minor. His music, like a hologram, flashes back and forth between the simple and the complicated.

Mozart's The Magic Flute, written in the last year of his life, was a forerunner of German Romantic opera. Critic Ted Libbey recommends a specific performance by a fabulous all-star cast.

Composers seem to equate villainy with the bass voice. All the better for Samuel Ramey, whose resonant low tones have thrilled opera audiences worldwide as he plays libertines, devils and scoundrels.

Late in his career, Mozart explored feelings of extraordinary emotional agitation in his symphonies. Ted Libbey recommends recordings of these works that balance power and passion, performed by the Berlin Philharmonic.

If Lincoln had used an iPod, it would have needed a lot of memory. Classical music commentator Miles Hoffman reports that the 16th president's musical tastes ranged from popular ballads to opera, and that his No. 1 favorite may have been, surprisingly enough, "Dixie."

Twenty years of programs, two hours a day, every day. That's around 45-thousand performances, recorded in places as remote as alpine ski villages in South Korea, to the great cathedrals of music in Paris, to chamber music festivals in the hills of New Mexico, to NPR's own Studio 4-A. It's impossible to squeeze 20 years into two hours, so here are some sweet memories, thrilling performances, and even a few flukes.

To mark the composer's 250th birthday this year, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and pianist Lambert Orkis have been on an all-Mozart sonata concert tour. They also have released a four-CD set of 16 Mozart sonatas.

In the 1950s, Nikolaus Harnoncourt was a cellist in the Vienna Symphony, tired of playing Mozart in a style he couldn't stomach. He quit the orchestra, started one of his own and began conducting music the way he wished.

On the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth, we look at his final symphony: No. 41 in C Major, or the Jupiter Symphony. Mozart wrote it just three years before his death in 1791.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 250th birthday is being celebrated in a major way Friday in Salzburg, Austria, the composer's birthplace. The city has made an industry of the commercialization of Mozart, and the celebration of his music — even though Mozart couldn't wait to leave it.

Sir Roger Norrington joins NPR's Fred Child in Salzburg for Mozart's birthday celebration. He conducts a selection of Mozart masterpieces, including the slow movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G Minor and the famous duet "Bei Maennern" from the opera The Magic Flute.

Pianist Mitsuko Uchida joins NPR's Fred Child in Salzburg to discuss the unusual slow movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 18 in F Major, K. 533.

Mozart's wild ride from child prodigy to accomplished composer was fueled with strong family relationships — not all of them good. Author and conductor Jane Glover tells Liane Hansen about her new book, Mozart's Women.

Mozart's relationship with his father was one of love and mutual respect, but not subservience. Scholars Neal Zaslaw and Jane Glover explore the relationship. Music includes a sonata for piano and violin, intrigue from The Marriage of Figaro and a piano concerto.

As a part of our continuing series of Mozart commentaries, Jane Glover, conductor and author of Mozart's Women, introduces us to the composer's mother, Maria Anne; his sister, Nannerl; and wife, Constanze, pictured at left. All three had an influence on his music.

We hear the overture to La Clemenza di Tito, by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Louis Langre conducting; a letter by Mozart with news of the successful premiere of Don Giovanni; from that opera, Cecelia Bartoli and Bryn Terfel sing "La ci darem la mano;" and the overture to The Marriage of Figaro, with Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Much fuss has been made over how much Mozart hated having to write mostly church music during his teenage years as an organist in Salzburg. And much of the music is ordinary. But these selections helped earn him a memorial at Mozartplatz.

Meet the rascal beneath the halo. Mozart could write sublime music and still behave like a little boy. It's the Mischievous Mozart, in all of his wisecracking manifestations. From bowling to musical dice, from party games to slapstick opera, a look at Mozart in his element.

The two were contemporaries, friends, colleagues, and mutual admirers. Can you tell if a piece is by Mozart or Haydn? Fred Child tests your Mozart meter by administering a good-natured quiz. And commentator Rob Kapilow has his own ideas of what makes Haydn different from Mozart.

In the second installment in our "Must-Have Mozart" series, musical scholar Nicholas Kenyon talks about his favorite recording of Mozart's Symphony No. 40: a Telarc CD (80139) with Sir Charles Mackerras leading the Prague Chamber Orchestra.

The music Mozart wrote for his horn-playing friend Joseph Leutgeb is still some of the finest music ever written for horn. We feature some of the highlights: the lyrical Horn Quintet and the Horn Concerto No. 4 from a performance by the Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra.

As part of a continuing Mozart series, Colonial music experts David Hildebrand and Kate Keller examine the similarities and differences between the music of revolutionary America and Mozart's European experience.

Renowned Mozart scholar Neal Zaslaw explores the composer's early years. And we hear performances of three Mozart symphonies: Symphony No. 11, Symphony No. 35 and the closing movement from the Symphony, K. 96.

Rising young soprano Danielle de Niese is about to release a new album dedicated to lesser-known Mozart arias. Hear the entire CD before it's released, and download an NPR exclusive bonus track: "Pupille Amate," from an opera Mozart wrote when he was 16.

Mozart's wild ride from child prodigy to accomplished composer was fueled with strong family relationships — not all of them good. Author and conductor Jane Glover tells Liane Hansen about her new book, Mozart's Women.

The classical music world had its share of high and low notes in 2005. The new year promises grand celebrations of Mozart's 250th birthday. What more is on the horizon? New Yorker music critic Alex Ross offers his insights.

The Juilliard School celebrates the 100th anniversary of its charter, marking a century of preparing fine musicians and performers. The school was the first American institution to rise to the level of its European counterparts.

On the eve of Mozart's 251st birthday, The Kitchen Sisters take us to Vienna, to Mozart's Hidden Kitchen: "The Tables of New Crowned Hope." The festival honored the composer's free-thinking philosophy, innovation and radical music.

In honor of the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth, his music is being performed around the globe. A controversial new production of an unfinished opera Mozart wrote when he was 23, Zaide, has just opened in New York.

According to wine consultant Clark Smith, certain types of music can enhance the flavor of certain types of wine. Cabernet should be paired with "music of darkness," for example, while certain White Zinfandels are exquisite with polka.

Written during the final year of Mozart's life, The Magic Flute presents a magical world of surreal characters and mysterious rites, and the composer filled it with Masonic symbols and allegory.

Anne-Sophie Mutter is one of the busiest musicians around, complete with new recordings, new pieces to premiere and seemingly endless concert tours. But when she's relaxing at home in Germany, she lists Ella Fitzgerald and La Bohème among her musical favorites.

Brian McCreath is host of Classical Weekend on Boston-based NPR station WGBH. Here, he compiles a list of the five best classical CDs to emerge this year, ranging from the complete Mozart to the works of contemporary composer Paul Moravec (left).

Michael Palmer leads the Bellingham Festival Orchestra in the Overture to Mozart's "The Abduction from the Seraglio." That brings up the issue of another Mozart opera with a Middle Eastern bent that's causing intense controversy in Germany at the moment.

A pair of young Curtis Institute grads started playing together in college, and are still together 12 years later. They gave a recital together in Atlanta's Spivey Hall just four weeks ago. Hilary Hahn is the violinist and Natalie Zhu the pianist in Mozart's Sonata in G Major, K. 301.