Mozart Complete

Update, Sept. 6, 2006. This set has sold 300,000 copies so far (170,000 of which were sold in France alone!), and is now available in the US, from Amazon.com for $120 [Edit: the price as I check, on Sept. 10, has gone up to $150. Perhaps it will drop again...] Yes, I still don’t like Mozart, but at that price, it’s certainly worth getting!

Sorry, I don’t like Mozart. As this “Mozart year” kicks off today, on the 250th anniversary of his birth, I can only say that I’m not looking forward to this flood of Mozart on classical music radio stations, TV (we have a classical music channel, Mezzo, here in France), and in stores. Already, here in France, a budget-priced complete Mozart box set, in 170 CDs is selling like ice cream cones on the beach in summer (more than 70,000 sets sold so far). At that price–90 EUR, or about $120–it’s a steal, and many of the performances are good. (Also available from Amazon UK. but not, apparently, in the US.)

Don’t get me wrong–I’m not dissing those who like Mozart, but he’s not my cup of tea. His music is too predictable, much of what he wrote sounds a lot like other things he wrote (though you could say that of Haydn, another prolific composer), but, above all, I think he is simply overrated. Sure, there is some good Mozart music: the Requiem, his string quartets, the clarinet concerto, even some of his piano sonatas. But a lot of his music is repetitive; you’ve heard one of his piano concertos, you’ve heard them all.

Give me Bach, Mahler, Schubert. Give me Haydn (well, some of Haydn’s works), or, for more zest, give me Charles Ives, Steve Reich or Wim Mertens. But we’re in for a merchandising onslaught of Mozart-this and Mozart-that, with music until we can no longer stomach it, ringtones, concerts and endless CDs.

The good thing about the Mozart year is that it will end in exactly 365 days. Wake me up when it’s over.