Genius Music Friends

Compiled by our Classical Music-desk.

‘Genius music friends’ is the title of a series of programmes in which Thijs Bonger talks about the intensive contacts between Haydn and Mozart. It also shows what it has resulted in musically. One of their common characteristics was humour. We listen to a joke Haydn made at the end of a string quartet. We also listen to a fragment of Mozart’s ‘Musikalischer Spass’ which shows that he, too, has humour. A scherzo by a quartet of Haydn, op. 33/2, inspired Mozart to write something similar in his KV 428. And that also applies to Mozart’s gloomy Piano concerto KV 466 in D kl, which he wrote after hearing Haydn’s 80th Symphony in the same key. Haydn’s masterfully written quartets whipped Mozart up in such a way that he decided to write his own series, which he dedicated to his friend Haydn.