Friday, March 6, 2020

It's Haffner time!


This montage from our Podcast Vault revisits a post from June 27 2014. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast162



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This week’s encore podcast was, itself, an encore when I issued it in June of 2014. The montage was part of a four-part series of “Tuesday to Friday” shares, reprising Tuesday blog themes for a Friday montage.

(In the future, I have a few more of those kinds of recycled Tuesday themes for Friday podcasts, but probably in the Fall of 2021.)

In the old town of Salzburg, along the left bank of the Salzach between the Franciscan Church and City Hall you wil find the Sigmund Haffner Gasse. It was named after Sigmund Haffner the Elder, mayor of Salzburg from 1768 to 1772. Twice married, his son from his second wife Sigmund the Younger was a merchant, philanthropist and a benefactor and friend of Mozart.

The pair of works featured this week were both commissioned by the Haffner family to mark special events – the wedding of Marie Elisabeth Haffner for the serenade (with its “hidden” violin concerto) and the ennoblement of Sigmund Haffner the Younger for the symphony.

As our bonus track thuis week, I chose another work Mozart dedicated to a friend. The String Quartet in D major, K. 499, was published by – if not indeed written for – his friend Franz Anton Hoffmeister. Because of this, the quartet has acquired the nickname Hoffmeister.


I think you will (still) love this music too.

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