Mel Bay's Creative Keyboard® Webzine | Misha Stefanuk - Salzburg, the City of Mozart

Salzburg, the City of Mozart

I am typing this in Salzburg, Austria, the Mozart's birth town, sitting in our room at the Priesterhaus Salzburg, which is across the house from where Mozart lived. My wife Evan Marie Dozier-Stefanuk won the Pro-Mozart competition this past February in Atlanta, the prize for which is a scholarship to study at the Universitat Mozarteum during the Salzburg Mozart Festival. My job is slightly simpler- I will play for her auditions and walk around like a tourist.

The city is absolutely beautiful. Everything here is saturated with Mozart. The recent internet poll showed that Mozart again is the most popular Austrian. Every other store in Salzburg sells Mozart Kugeln, a popular chocolate, and they have an array of Mozart related items from soap and drinks to jewelry and tableware. The prices are from a realistic 3 Euros (just about $3), up to quite unrealistic prices. You constantly run into all kinds of Café Mozart's and Bar Amadeus'. Walking is the best part of being in Salzburg; the streets go everywhere. So we walked around Salzburg a lot, and there is more to come. However, sight-seeing is only a part of my reason to come here.

My first thing to do was to go to Mozart's Geburtzhaus, the place where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. Visiting it was my idée fix to start with. At Mozart's birth place, the illusion becomes complete. Wolfgang is somewhere in this town, he might be in Vienna or Prague, but not very far. People on the streets still even look like him. We live above a little café like the ones that Salzburg is filled with, and strangely enough I hear laughter just like Tom Hulce had in the movie, Amadeus. I wonder if that was a result of research in preparation for the part. Mozart's Geburtzhaus has a museum, and I saw, almost touched, one of his instruments.

My coming here is like a pilgrimage to Mozart. He is so very important to my understanding of music and the role it plays in human life. Add to that, his personality as I imagine it is just so loveable. It is very pleasant to walk same streets, and it often feels like nothing has changed since the time he lived here, except perhaps for a wireless internet connection that we are getting from the café across the street.

The room downstairs were we practice has a history as well. The building is about 350 years old, it still has wonderful wooden floor and ceiling- great sound, and an old Bosendorfer grand in a very playable shape. So we rehearsed through our music, and it felt like we brought a gift for Mr. Amadeus. Some Verdi and some of his own music, and then an aria by Andre Previn and a piece that I composed. I wonder what he would think… Another interesting fact about the piece we wrote- my wife wrote the words sitting on my grandparents' balcony in Moscow, while I was in Atlanta, GA, where I wrote music to it almost a year later. And now we are rehearsing it in Salzburg literally one-hundred feet from Mozart's house. So, this piece has quite an international upbringing, as much of Mozart's music did. I hope it has similar success too!

In a way, everything I play, compose or improvise is inspired by Mozart, Bach, Scott Joplin, Oscar Peterson; the list will go on and on. I do not know every single piece of their music or all about their entire lives, but they are always the source for my inspiration and mentors to look up to. Sometimes you get closer to their lives physically, and you can be in the places where they have been, imagining what it may have felt like 250 years ago.

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