You’re 18 years old, on top of the world after a triumphant tour of Italy and with a plum gig as court musicians for the prince-archbishop of Salzburg. How could your first bassoon concerto be anything other that buoyant, vernal and exhilarating?
“The piece is quite charming,” said Sue Heineman, principal bassoonist for the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., and a 13-year veteran of the Grand Teton Music Festival. “There’s plenty of technical passagework as well as lyrical writing, a range of three octaves.”
Heineman will be the featured soloist for the Festival Orchestra’s performances of Mozart’s Bassoon Concert (1774), which will be bookended by the prodigy’s Symphony No. 25 (1773) and Shostakovich’s career-saving Symphony No. 5 (1937, see sidebar), Friday and Saturday at Walk Hall in Teton Village. GTMF Music Director Sir Donald Runnicles conducts.
…The opening strains of Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 should be familiar to many ears, not least because director Milos Forman used it at the start of his eight-time Academy Award-winning film “Amadeus.”
