Bach and Mozart in New Orleans

Additional Details

Session 2 | Thursday, January 21, 2027

18:15–19:45 | Lecture

Throughout history, composers have engaged in fascinating dialogues with the works of their predecessors and contemporaries. They wrote musical tributes, arranged beloved works, and composed variations on familiar themes—sometimes out of admiration, sometimes out of nostalgia, and sometimes as a starting point for a new and independent creation.

Accompanied by musical demonstrations, we will explore some of the most famous and intriguing tributes and variations in the repertoire: Tchaikovsky contemplating Mozart, Brahms writing variations on a theme attributed to Haydn, Rachmaninoff following in Liszt’s footsteps, as well as works by Britten, Schnittke, and other composers.

We will examine how a familiar theme changes its form, style, color, and character, and how a tribute becomes a creative encounter between different periods, musical languages, and personalities.

Lecturer: Yaron Gottfried

20:00–21:15 | Concert

An encounter between classical music and the world of jazz. Improvisation, which lies at the heart of the jazz language, is essentially a variation created in real time—a form of musical freedom operating within a framework of harmony, rhythm, and structure.

The program will feature Haydn’s humor and surprise, Tchaikovsky’s tribute to Mozart, and works by Yaron Gottfried that offer the music of Bach and Mozart a fresh, rhythmic, and compelling interpretation for jazz trio and orchestra.

• Haydn — Movement from Symphony No. 94, “The Surprise”
• Tchaikovsky — Mozartiana
• Bach / Gottfried — The Unequal-Tempered Piano
• Gottfried — Mozart Swings for jazz trio and orchestra, based on Mozart’s Symphonies Nos. 36 and 40

Conductor and piano: Yaron Gottfried
Double bass: Yorai Oron
Drums: Roni Holan