Todd Harris: It is my pleasure to share Andrei’s message about his Mozart Concert in Sofia in english:

“My dear friends!

As promised, here is a complete recording of my concert in Sofia. The Bulgarians filtered out extraneous noises (creaky seats, doors, etc.). At my request, they cut out applause between the parts, as such interruptions would break your chain of thought and detract from your musical experience. Now, you can join me at the concert “tete-a-tete” and live Mozart’s music through the purity of his musical soul.

Recall that I mentioned in an earlier post that the audience was so enthused about the completely “new” second movement that they interrupted the concert after the second movement was over. This is completely understandable; it is how I would have reacted to this wondrous manifestation of Mozart’s fantasy. At this point in his career, talent allowed him to express himself much more directly through this concerto than he ever able to before, in previous works. His music is simply saturated with the content, and narrative of his soul.

Of course, Mozart’s favorite plots are all there for us to take in: fate, life and fears, eternal sadness. But they are expressed through a nervous search for harmony, choleric passions and deep melancholy; there is hope and love, and a fear of death always lurking just beneath the surface, struggling to reach the fore of our consciousness. All this is expressed in the first movement.

In the second movement, he explores these ideas with greater intensity and goes even further, saturating the plot with contrasts using beloved opera narratives – a carefree drunkard and flights of fancy “in dreams and in reality.” Herein, Mozart anticipated the most daring discoveries of the romantics, such as Schumann, who most fully embodied this Spirit, expressing dreams his entire life, existing largely outside the ordinary reality shared by most people.

Mozart’s Operatic experience elevated his skill as a composer, broadening the horizon and expanding his expressive toolset to the point that his soulful expression became autonomic – in this Concerto he could finally conjure and convey through music incredibly complex fantasies, fantastic fairy-tale stories and advance a complexity to his narrative.

My friends, It gives me great joy to share this experience with you, those who have made it possible for me to materialize amazing musical and philosophical discoveries. I am pleased to give you the opportunity to join me on Mozart’s flight of fancy, and to do so at your leisure by simply tapping a screen or pressing a button on your computer. It is no exaggeration when I say that this common sharing vehicle of the electronic age, the Internet, is truly a miracle of technology because it allows us to share immediately, and for a lifetime, the miracles of music together, even when we are physically far apart.

So from a quarter of a millennium past, here is a greeting, a living message, an excited “Hello”, to the future – from a strange, nervous little man, hundreds of years ahead of his time, heralding from the candlelit night of his Viennese experience: a pomp and mixed circumstance of its royal panoply from 1781 including all its triumph and mortal tragedies.

Great Music is a priceless commodity, rising in spirit above the mundanity of mortal laws and lucre. This sharing of that music with you, my dear friends, is my way of showing my appreciation of your company, and your dedication to our common cause: the promulgation of serious music in a mindful and conscious way, unbridled from the tethers of the usual “commercial” production.

Music requires one to be endlessly immersed within it, “day and night”; it is a somewhat lonely way of life, breaking away from the usual and expected concert bustle and public life. Because such a life causes a person to immediately become separated from the material. One loses the intimacy required by the music to truly appreciate it and communicate it consciously. Music does not forgive vanity and severely punishes such a “betrayal” of its true dedication. Tragically, music punished the Mozart for the fact that he was not yet ready to serve her without fuss, as the great art requires.

Once again I thank my friends for the fact that you rallied and became donors to the cause of live music, dedicating your work, “your blood” to it, selflessly, and for the love of all the music we share together. It is the true, pure love of our musically conscious community and of our mutually engaged musical spirit that binds us and weaves the fabric of our friendship. Together we brought reality to the surreal, and gave material flesh to the ideal. Perhaps Someday all people will live like this, but not yet.

In our own time, we can take solace in the joys of today’s miracle, in spite of the very real difficulties posed by “reality”. Please accept this gift from me as a small token of my appreciation, a labor of love for you, for Mozart, and our deliberate dedication to Consciously aware Great Music, the life-blood of our common cause.”

AG ❤