W.a. Mozart - Musical Journey: Switzerland From Zurich to Zermat - DVD

The Places The tour relates to the life of Mozart, from his native Salzburg to his final precarious independence in Vienna. There are glimpse of the Salzburg Church of St Peter and of the Cathedral, with which Mozart and his father, members of the musical establishment of the ruling Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg, were closely concerned. Memorials of Mozart and other composers are seen in Vienna, while a brief detour to Belgium to the idiosyncratic Musée Wiertz and to the Tournai Musée des Beaux Arts, brings another aspect to the journey. The Music Mozart's Requiem Mass was commissioned anonymously in July 1791 by Count Franz Walsegg zu Stuppach, who sought to commemorate the recent death of his wife by the performance of a work of this kind that he might, at least by implication, claim as his own. An initial fee of sixty ducats was paid, with promise of a further sum when the Requiem was completed. But in November Mozart was taken ill and within a fortnight he was dead. His widow, Constanze, who needed the rest of the fee for the work, asked Joseph Eybler, who had assisted Mozart in rehearsals for Cose fan tutte, to finish the composition and the scoring. He later gave up the task and the unfinished score finally came into the hands of Franz Xaver Süssmayr, so that the best known form of the Requiem is that started by Mozart, continued briefly by Eybler and completed by Süssmayr.

The Places • The tour begins in the Salzkammergut, most of which lies nowadays in Upper Austria. It includes Hellbrunn Palace and the Residenz in Salzburg and the Styrian city of Graz. The Music • The music for our journey is taken from Mozart's Haffner Serenade, written in honour of a friend in Mozart's native city of Salzburg.

The places visited in this film range from the icy slopes of the Jungfraujoch, approached by the highest railway in Europe, to the tranquility of Lake Thun, the imposing waterfalls of Trummelbach and the distinctive French, German, Italian and Romansch regions of the country. The music for this tour of Switzerland is by Franz Schubert, a composer who spent his life largely in his native Vienna. His famous 'Unfinished Symphony', the two movements of which were written in 1822, were not performed until 37 years after Schubert's death, when the manuscripts were discovered at the home of Schubert's friend Anselm Huttenbrenner. The music continues with Schubert's 'Fifth Symphony', written in the space of a few weeks in 1816, when the composer was nineteen.