Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Flötenkonzerte · Konzert für Flöte und Harfe

Honestly, I didn’t feel like going to that concert: I was notified just a couple of hours before it started, with no details at all, I had to drive over an hour on the highway to reach the conservatory without parking, I was quite comfortable sleeping in a tank top and shorts on the bed and had already pictured my evening watching a movie on the couch in a plush pajama and high-calorie snacks. I think that after all, it's a flute concert, my favorite musical instrument, it's free, and it might be useful to leave the house every now and then.

After €3.60 on the highway, I reach the concert hall: it's full of relatives and friends of the students who will play the pieces in the program, as well as other attendees very attracted by the free musical afternoon and not so much by the cold on the street. I grab the program booklet, and while I make myself comfortable in the chair, I read through the program. It's a shock: the three performances include two sonatas for piano & flute and a concerto for orchestra & flute, all by Mozart, and the flute concerto is precisely the one in G major, the KV 313 I've been listening to since childhood, losing myself in the infinite joy of that almost half-hour of lucid dream.

Mozart, whom for years I knew through the distorted and fictionalized lens, yes, but no less fascinating, of Forman’s "Amadeus" and then by playing him with my own hands on the piano and somewhat detesting him, and whom only in recent years I have been able to rediscover close to me, to understand not only as a man, but as a friend and artist, as an extraordinary communicator of human emotion, as a conduit between the impossibility of precisely describing the qualia of our perception and the actual possibility of doing so that very few human beings have ever had. KV 313! Listened to I don’t even remember how many times and never live, and finally, I have the chance to hear it performed just a few meters from my ears, I can’t believe it, my eyes are already wet, I go to the bathroom, come back, and try to sit as centrally as possible on a seat right in front of the semi-circular empty space I imagine will be occupied by the soloist, surrounded by chairs for the orchestra. The lights go down, and the concert begins.

Three girls enter: two take their places at the piano, one plays while the other turns the pages, the third is only wearing a petite robe noire and prepares with her flute to play the duet KV 14. She’s good, but throughout the piece, I can only focus on her incredibly long legs revealed by the tiny skirt and elongated by thin heels. Sometimes she squeezes her legs together and makes her heels touch, then suddenly spreads them like an A, then slowly closes them again and opens them suddenly once more. When she finishes the third movement, she thanks and leaves with long strides, the two girls at the piano switch positions, and a dark-haired guy in his twenties with a head full of curls enters, performing another of the six London duets, KV 13, moving a little to follow the music's rhythm. I’d like to give him the attention he deserves because he’s very good too, but all those empty chairs behind his back distract me because I know they’ll be filled by four violins, a viola, a cello, two horns, two oboes, two flutes, and next to them a standing double bass, which indeed take their places on stage as soon as the concluding minuet ends. Longlegs and Curlylock take their flutist seats, former protagonists now accompanists, and take the key from the first violin as the soloist enters: Maxence Larrieu, French, 79 this October, one of the most important living flutists in the world, I have several of his recordings, he’s always on a plane to play anywhere and now he’s here in front of me with this piece of music that represents a part of my life, and he doesn’t know it.

All the orchestra members make themselves comfortable, and Larrieu remains standing in the semicircular space alongside the conductor. Five seconds of silence. The music starts, and I can’t hear it: in my mind flows such a quantity of images, memories, good and bad moments of my life, I rethink many things, and things link together in streams of consciousness floating on the flute, it’s unstoppable, the dialogue between the instruments is so homogeneous and happy that I myself can't be happy and I fall prey to a despondency, a sadness, a sweet melancholy, like a gentle hand reminding me of my age, what I’ve already built and what’s still missing, and many card castles miserably collapsing before my eyes, and to cry, cry, cry. Only when the instruments fall silent and only the flute remains, suddenly my head stops spinning, and I simply listen without thinking about anything: the notes rise and fall, and there seems to be no reason beyond touching the heart of those who listen. Twenty minutes of very soft musical fabric woven by Larrieu’s magical flute, which is a marvel, so fast and precise, a sound so clean and consistent, in the most difficult passages, he fluidifies the scales, rendering them a single tonal gradient; Longlegs occasionally looks at him with wide eyes as if amazed and admiring, perhaps making comparisons with herself and thinking, "who knows where I’ll be at 79 years old".

When the concert is over, I feel like I’m in a trance, as if underwater, like cotton in my ears. I feel my eyes wet, I don’t even know why. The maestro grants two encores, then bids farewell and leaves.

Back home, I search the shelf for that Deutsche Grammophon CD I bought for four euros at a closing record store selling everything out: it contains Mozart’s two flute and orchestra concertos, KV 313 and 314, and then that other miracle that is the KV 299 concerto for orchestra and flute & harp. The CD is all cloudy and scratched, just like the vinyl at my parents' house, but I put it in the player once more. The two flute concertos are performed by the English Chamber Orchestra with soloist Karlheinz Zöller, while the third is played by the Berliners, always with Zöller and Nicanor Zabaleta on the harp, who, despite being a man, gently caresses his bulky instrument with incredible tenderness. The form of the concerto in Mozart solidifies into three movements of different rhythms, of which the second is usually slower, and the third is danceable, like a rondo or minuet. It is very difficult to express in words the quality of this music: delving into a technical discussion, certain aspects might be praised, which still are not truly those that evoke emotion in the listener. It is the naturalness and apparent simplicity that enchants: starting from a catchy little tune, Mozart infinitely expands the expressive possibilities of the notes through the expressive possibilities of the instruments, creating an arabesque of incredible width and complexity and at the same time of perfect listenability and great lightness, like making a mosaic starting from one tile then ending by covering the entire wall, which from afar is perfectly balanced in colors and pleasing in shapes. Nothing is needed to enjoy the quality of this music; just let oneself be carried away by the river of tears, following its meanders and falls. It is just as Salieri once said: "On the page it looked like...nothing...".