All 835 Mozart Works Set During N. Y. Bicentennial

December of 1991 will mark the 200th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s death. To honor this bicentennial, Lincoln Center in New York City will host a mammoth, 19-month festival of the composer’s music, beginning Jan. 27, 1991, the 235th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

More than 500 concert events, the bulk to be performed by the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic and the faculty and students of the Juilliard School of Music, will make up the celebration, scheduled to end Aug. 29, 1992.

Mozart’s complete oeuvre will be performed during this massive celebration: All 835 compositions listed in the 626-item Kochel listings, and including 21 operas, 373 orchestral works, 77 sacred pieces, 98 works of chamber music and a large number of pieces intended for performance in the home.

Performances will be given in Lincoln Center by the 10 constituent companies of the center--the eleventh sponsoring entity is the umbrella presenter, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Inc.--and by invited guest performers and organizations.

Besides the Met, the Philharmonic and Juilliard, the constituent companies of Lincoln Center are New York City Ballet, New York City Opera, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Lincoln Center Theater, School of American Ballet and the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

Neal Zaslaw, a Mozart scholar and professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., is the official music adviser to the bicentennial. In a phone interview last week, Zaslaw described the two-year planning stage for the festivities.

“The first step was a meeting, bringing together the various constituents of Lincoln Center, headed by Nathan Leventhal of the Center Inc., plus a handful of Mozart people like myself. Since then, we have put together the programming, a huge undertaking.”

For this bicentennial project, the musicologist reports, “Every one of Mozart’s works had to be assigned a performer. As far as that is concerned, we are now complete, and over the hump.”

The actual opening of the festivities will be a concert, conducted by Zubin Mehta, by the New York Philharmonic and the Juilliard Orchestra, Jan. 27, 1991. This event will re-create a program arranged and conducted by Mozart himself on March 23, 1783; it includes the “Haffner” Symphony and the Piano Concertos Nos. 5 and 13, among other works.

During the celebrations, the Metropolitan Opera will mount a new production of “Die Zauberflote,” opening Jan. 30, 1991, to be conducted by music director James Levine, staged by Werner Herzog and with sets designed by Maurizio Balo.

In these two seasons ending 1991-92, the Met will also stage “Le Nozze di Figaro,” “Don Giovanni,” “La Clemenza di Tito,” “Idomeneo,” “Cosi fan Tutte” and “Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail.” New York City Opera will give “Nozze di Figaro” and “Zauberflote” during the same time period. And forces from the Juilliard School will mount Mozart’s “Lo Sposo Deluso.”

The New York Philharmonic, mostly conducted by outgoing music director Zubin Mehta, will play a Mozart work on almost every one of its concerts during this time.

On the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death, Dec. 5, 1991, Erich Leinsdorf will conduct the Philharmonic in the Requiem on a program also to include some of the composer’s Masonic music (Mozart was a dedicated Mason) and a piano concerto to be played by Alicia de Larrocha.

Great Performers at Lincoln Center, an ongoing series, will present the complete piano sonatas, as played by Mitsuko Uchida in five concerts, as well as another, three-recital series of piano sonatas to be performed by Larrocha.

It will also offer the complete string quartets and quintets, to be given by the Juilliard and Tokyo quartets, plus guests; the complete trios as played by the Beaux Arts Trio, and a four-concert series with Itzhak Perlman and Daniel Barenboim collaborating in sonatas for violin and piano.

In addition, visiting American and international symphonic organizations from Vienna, Salzburg, Venice, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, London and St. Paul will offer many of the composer’s orchestral works.

“The job of scheduling 800 works has a lot to do with cajoling and persuading,” Zaslaw said, adding that “not every work belongs in a big hall. Fortunately, Lincoln Center has small auditoriums as well as large.” He mentions two smaller halls at the Juilliard School, as well as a new hall recently built for the Film Society, which will share it for Mozart’s “Hausmusik.”

For the sacred-music portion of the bicentennial presentations, Zaslaw said that choruses and orchestras from visiting conservatories and universities will perform during the 19 months of festivities. These include ensembles from Boston University, Florida State University, Indiana University, the Interlochen Arts Academy, Oberlin College (Ohio) Conservatory and the USC School of Music.

Among the many donors contributing to the funding of the bicentennial are the Samuels Foundation, the E. Nakamichi Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a consortium of Japanese corporations including the Sony Corp. of America Foundation, Hitachi America, Ltd., Toyota Motor Corporate Services of North America and Japan Air Lines.