Lost Mozart work emerges after 239 years

Beginning Friday, Dec. 2, the seventh annual International Şefika Kutluer Festival (named after acclaimed flutist Şefika Kutluer) opens in Istanbul and Ankara. The opening concert features an all-Mozart program, with Kutluer backed by Austria's Tutti Mozart Orchestra. The program features a world premiere of a work Mozart composed when he was 21 years old.

The composition is a flute concerto written for flutist Johann Baptist Wendling, and was recently unearthed the Tutti Mozart Orchestra's founder/conductor, Vinicius Kattah. In an interview, Kutluer explained, "The Tutti Mozart Orchestra had been searching for this concerto for a long time. Kattah worked like a detective, searching for all letters written by Mozart and his mother to his father."

The flutist continued: "It has been in a library in Switzerland under the name 'Wendling Flute Concerto' and has never been performed. But the letter Mozart wrote to his father was discovered recently, and the work was understood to have been composed by Mozart. I am proud to be performing this work."

If you can't make it to Turkey for the premiere, check out Tutti Mozart's Facebook page, where the performance will be livestreamed.

See the video below for more information on Tutti Mozart.

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