An Afternoon in van Swieten's Salon

Keiko Shichijo: In 1782, Mozart regularly attended a salon sponsored by the Dutch diplomat van Swieten, where he was introduced to the music of Bach and Handel. This experience led to a change in the composer’s own creativity and compositional style, opening his mind to new harmonic structures, contrapuntal techniques and dramatic expression. This album offers a glimpse of the transformation of Mozart's wonderful “musical consciousness”. I aim to convey the striking expressivity of the 19th century performance of Mozart’s music, while benefiting from the musical creativities from today.