O N    O F F E R :  a program of juxtaposition from two of music’s most creative composers, writing in two styles more than a century apart. 

       First comes a poignant quintet, written by Mozart in 1789 — a difficult and unhappy year for him — yet filled with sweet and warm music that brings comfort, fresh perspective, and hope.  Here is Mozart bringing order to, and despite his disordered life, through music.  For this In Focus performance, principal clarinet Afendi Yusuf joins Cleveland Orchestra colleagues in this extraordinary work.

       For Alban Berg, writing more than a century after Mozart, the process of musical creation was an intensely-driven search for innovative answers using old materials in new ways — to shake up the old order into newly disordered beauty.  In his Three Pieces from Lyric Suite, he creates solace and splendor in contrasting string voices, buzzing and interacting with hard-edged vitality, passionate ardor, and poetic grace.
   

M O Z A R T  was baptized as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus
Mozart.  His first two baptismal names, Johannes Chrysostomus, represent his saints’ names, following the custom of the Roman Catholic Church at the time.  
In practice, his family called him Wolfgang.  Theophilus comes from Greek and
can be rendered as “lover of God” or “loved by God.”  Amadeus is a Latin version
of this same name.  Mozart most often signed his name as “Wolfgang Amadè Mozart,” saving Amadeus only as an occasional joke.  At the time of his death, scholars in all fields of learning were quite enamored of Latin naming and conventions (this is the period of the classification and cataloging of life on earth into king-dom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, etc.) and successfully “changed” his name to Amadeus.  Only in recent years have we started remembering the Amadè middle name he actually preferred.

—Eric Sellen