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Mozart with Punch and Dreck 2015
Deepen your understanding of Mozart with two lectures on Mozart’s life, music and historic era by Susan Waterfall and Bob Winn, with images by Mina Cohen.
- Punch: Mozart’s Favorite Beverage. Taste and learn about the drink of the Enlightenment. Punschmeister: Mike Issel.
- Dreck: Mozart at his Naughtiest. Performances of the comic trio Das Bandel (The Lost Garterbelt) K. 441 and the canon Bona Nox K. 561. Eugene Brancoveanu, Adina Dorband, Chester Pidduck and Susan Waterfall.
This lecture contains some bawdy, scatological humor and explicit images.
Mozart in Mendocino, a Four-Part Series
This Susan Waterfall production is a four-day exploration of the lesser-known aspects of Mozart’s life and music, with examinations of his social and cultural context, both silly and serious. Why was Punch the drink of the Enlightenment? How did Mozart’s bawdy brand of family humor serve to balance his deeply introspective bouts of composing? A coda to the Mozart festivities will be Spencer Myer’s performance of Piano Concerto No. 21 K. 467 with the Festival Orchestra. People came away from last year’s Bachfest saying, “I thought I knew all about Bach, but I learned so many fascinating details.” Now on to Mozart!
Susan Waterfall’s production of the Mozart in Mendocino series is generously sponsored by Thomas Safran.
“Waterfall’s productions—which in the past have included such diverse themes as Scandalous Music! Satie, Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky; Bartok’s Women; and Degenerate Music, the modern music of Germany (and the German émigré community) during the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era and World War II—always present exciting, absorbing playing of great music, but are also rare, distinctive examples of what can be called music education, though they’re more conversational, truly a sharing of perspective, interest, anecdote … Her manner is like a friend’s turning at a dinner table to answer a question with expert information and wit. There’s a sense of immediacy to her delivery, weaving in and out of the playing, that knits together different perspectives from the past two and a half centuries into an intimately conceived prescience, a present awareness of this heritage. It’s something unique that needs to be experienced.” Ken Bullock, Berkeley Daily Planet