“In classical music’s equivalent of the Rumble In The Jungle (let’s call it The Maul in the Hall) heavyweight geniuses Mozart and Beethoven went amiably toe to toe in the Llewellyn Hall on Tuesday,” writes Ian Warden in Tuesday’s (7/26) Canberra Times (Australia). “The judges, the members of the teeming audience of small schoolchildren, preschool to year 6, were asked to judge which man’s music reigned supreme…. Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s four Mozart vs Beethoven occasions are part of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra’s Noteworthy music education program…. Mozart and Beethoven are played respectively by the costumed and bewigged George Ellis and Guy Noble. Both men are orchestral maestros of renown but on Tuesday were having child-like fun dressing up as the towering heroes of their profession. The CSO played, for us all to judge, excerpts of some of both composers’ greatest hits. ‘I wrote 41 symphonies and you only wrote nine!’ Mozart crowed at Beethoven. ‘But yours were a little bit bigger,’ Mozart admitted…. Perhaps it was the fact of the terrific gig ending with some of Beethoven’s enormous-in-every-way Ninth Symphony (lots of little faces around me were registering childish awe) that tipped the vote Beethoven’s way.”
Posted July 27, 2016
