The Mozart Violin Concerti: A Facsimile Edition of the Autographs (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781606600597)

A child prodigy who blossomed into the Classical era's most influential composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) wrote more than 600 works in his brief life. His oeuvre encompasses a wide variety of genres, including symphonic, chamber, operatic, and choral music. Mozart's genius as a composer tends to overshadow his image as a performer, just as his reputation as a pianist eclipses his identity as a violist, but these works attest to his close and enduring relationship with the violin.
Born in Romania and educated in Budapest, Hungary, as a concert violinist, Gabriel Banat came to the United States after World War II. Performing since the age of twelve in recital and as soloist with orchestras, he taught violin at Smith College, Hartt School of Music at Hartford University, and was head of the department and conducted the orchestra at the Westchester Conservatory. He also gave master classes on Mozart in Japan, Argentina, and Spain. After a quarter of a century touring the United States, Europe, and Japan, he joined the New York Philharmonic for 23 years. He published Masters of the Violin, a six-volume facsimile collection of 17th- and 18th-century violinist-composers, and his 2006 biography of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the first composer of African origin, earned unanimous critical acclaim. In 1986, Banat published the autographs of Mozart'sviolin concertos, missing from Berlin since 1941. He rediscovered them in Poland, and performed them the following year from the manuscript in Tokyo, Japan. Isaac Stern described Banat's edition of the concertos as of enormous interest and inestimable value.