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RR 2006/387 The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia Edited by Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe Cambridge University Press Cambridge 2006 xii + 662 pp. ISBN 0 521 85659 0 £95 $175
Keywords Bibliographies, Music
Review DOI 10.1108/09504120610691763
Michael Kelly, the tenor who took part in the first performances of Mozart's Nozze di Figaro, describes in his Reminiscences a musical party where string quartets were played by Haydn and Dittersdorf (first and second violins), Mozart (viola) and Vannai (cello), but his memoirs were written several decades later in 1826, and his account is not entirely convincing since Dittersdorf, a very capable violinist, is more likely to have taken the first violin part, and Vanhal is not otherwise known to have played the cello. "Perhaps he conflated more than one social event in his account". I quote from the entry under Joseph Haydn rather than Kelly himself where I would have expected to find it.
As everybody knows, 2006 is the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, and if you want to know all about him this may be the answer. It is stuffed full with facts as...