We went to an enjoyable concert consisting of the Overture to the Magic Flute, Piano Concerto no. 21, and the Requiem. Music this popular is often used as a lure to get audiences to listen to something more obscure, but this was pure pleasure.

I remember being shocked when I first discovered that the usual version of the Requiem is a completion of a work Mozart never finished himself. Whether or not he really came to think of it as music for his own funeral, it’s impossible not to be reminded of his early death, which certainly deprived us of some of the greatest classical music never written. Imagine the results of an extended rivalry between Mozart and Beethoven, each needling the other into constantly raising their game, like some Romantic era Lennon and McCartney…