1767 – A retrospective, Classical Opera/Page, Wigmore Hall, London, review: The 11-year-old Mozart had composed his first opera

Classical Opera’s MOZART 250 begins with a musical overview of 1767, conducted by Ian Page, with a line-up of young soloists and a period-instrument orchestra

Conductor Ian Page's project explores music written by the composer and his contemporaries 250 years ago (YouTube)

It’s a really ingenious idea: following Mozart’s development in real time at a 250-year remove, tracing his compositions chronologically alongside the music which informed his taste. Conductor Ian Page’s ambitious Mozart 250 project has now arrived at the 11-year-old Mozart, freshly returned from a three-and-half year European tour.

1767 saw Mozart compose his first opera, Apollo et Hyacinthus, from which we heard a duet, his symphony No 6 in F major, and the astonishingly mature Grabmusik, a cantata on Christ’s Grave (again an excerpt). These early works already contain enough curlicues to make out what will become Mozart’s familiar much-loved musical signature. He can be heard exploring and already mastering (at 11) the duet form, interleaving, contrasting, and melding the voices to ecstatic effect.

It helped that Page had three of the most impressive rising young stars of Britain’s music scene to demonstrate: Gemma Summerfield with her richly fluid soprano, beautifully controlled, dramatic tenor Stuart Jackson, and Ashley Riches’ mellifluously expressive bass-baritone, backed by his excellent Orchestra of Classical Opera.

He also deserves a vote of thanks for unearthing varied gems incomprehensibly fallen from view, like Michael Haydn’s Stabat Mater and Abel’s Frena le belle lagrime with its entrancing viola da gamba introduction. It’s a series worth following: this was an unalloyed pleasure from start to finish.

This concert is available on BBC iPlayer