Each summer for 50 years, Lincoln Center’s “Mostly Mozart Festival” has radiated an air of celebration, combining the exhilaration of summer with Mozart’s inventive genius and inspiring legacy. This year’s festival will take place from July 22 through August 27.
As always, the Mostly Mozart Festival is centered around the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and cherished Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée. At the top of the festival, visionary director Netia Jones crafts a special evening of Mozart’s opera music, and the closing is a not-to-be-missed revival of Mark Morris’s acclaimed Mozart Dances. In between, the festival features esteemed guest conductors, concert stagings of Così fan tutte and Idomeneo, and beloved guests, including violinist Joshua Bell, pianist Richard Goode, and clarinetist Martin Fröst. The Emerson String Quartet and pianist Emanuel Ax come together for a pair of performances, and the Little Night Music series returns with pianists Paul Lewis and Inon Barnatan and harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani in his festival debut.
The festival’s artists-in-residence, the International Contemporary Ensemble, mark this anniversary with the ambitious 50 for 50 project, which will present 50 premieres across the campus. The festival also invites all to the world premiere and free performance of David Lang’s the public domain, an epic work for 1,000 voices that professional and amateur singers can join. Pre-concert recitals, film, and talks round out the festival, including a number of special events presented in collaboration with the New York Public Library.
The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra is the festival’s musical heart: outstanding performances led by Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée and dynamic guest conductors from around the world.
The Mark Morris Dance Group is a not-to-be-missed revival of one of Mark Morris’s most celebrated dance masterpieces. Ten years ago, on the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, Lincoln Center commissioned Mark Morris’s Mozart Dances. Hailed as a masterpiece and “one of Mr. Morris’s grandest achievements” (New York Times), Mozart Dances offers a visually stimulating, elegant, and often tender display of movement and technique. In this revival of the transcendent dance trilogy, pianists Garrick Ohlsson and Inon Barnatan, with Louis Langrée and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, accompany the lyricism and astounding precision of the Mark Morris Dance Group.
Opera and choral music features exuberant young voices abound in concert stagings of two beloved Mozart operas, plus a star-studded opening night featuring Amadeus’s vocal music and a magnificent choral double bill.
Don’t miss the International Contemporary Ensemble’s “50 for 50,” in which Mostly Mozart’s pioneering artists-in-residence present 50 premieres to celebrate 50 years of Mostly Mozart.
The Festival also includes “A Little Night Music.” The perfect summer evening ends (or begins!) at Mostly Mozart, perched above the city in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse. Enjoy complimentary wine, candlelight, and a twinkling skyline in these intimate, hour-long performances.
Lincoln Center (Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts) serves three primary roles: world’s leading presenter of superb artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and community relations, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. In addition, LCPA led a $1.2 billion campus renovation, completed in October 2012.