3 Aug 2009

New works by Mozart performed

9:45 pm on 3 August 2009

Two piano works by Mozart have been heard in public for the first time since they were recently identified, more than 200 years after the composer's death.

They were performed in Salzburg, the city of his birth, by an Austrian pianist, Florian Birsak, on Mozart's own piano at a house where he lived from 1773-1780. It is now a museum.

The BBC reports they are the first movement of the concerto in G, molto allegro, and a prelude in G.

They are believed to have been written when the composer was only eight years old.

It took an analysis of Mozart's style and handwriting by experts to satisfy themselves that the two concertos were indeed his.

Posthumous discoveries of Mozart works are rare but not unknown. In January, a piece that had lain undiscovered in a French library for years had its first performance.

Mozart wrote more than 600 known pieces of music before his death in 1791 at the age of 35.

He began composing at the age of five and his works include operas, chamber music, choral pieces and piano concertos.

The latest works will be heard again next year, complete with orchestrations, at the annual Mozart Week on 22 to 31 January in Salzburg.