The Many Facets of Mozart

Presented by the Bard Music Festival

The 2026 Bard Music Festival examines the life and times of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, the most celebrated and recognized name in classical music.

Harnessing Bard’s unusual ability to integrate orchestral, vocal, and chamber works within a single event, this program will be presented with commentary by Leon Botstein.

Devoted entirely to Mozart’s own music, it spans the breadth of the composer’s short career, from the pioneering four-hands duet he wrote as a teenager to Eine kleine deutsche Kantate, a work reflecting his commitment to Freemasonry, written shortly before his death. Other featured works include the masterly Quintet in E-flat for Piano and Winds, which he famously considered his best composition; Ch’io mi scordi di te?, the virtuosic opera aria-cum-piano concerto that he performed with The Marriage of Figaro’s first Susanna; the popular Sinfonia concertante in E-flat, which showcases his solo string writing; and his delightful “Paris” Symphony, composed in the French capital during the final years of the Ancien Regime.