A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SOCIETY

The Mozart Society of Toronto is one of many such societies all over the world, forming a loose network around the International Mozart Foundation in Salzburg, Austria. The Society in Toronto was founded in 1984 by Peter Sandor who guided its progress until his death in 2001, developing it from precarious beginnings into a healthy, vigorous organization. Presently we have over 140 loyal members.

From the beginning, live concerts have been the backbone of our programs. Of the 626 works by Mozart, we presented well above 100, many in their entirety. Excerpts were given from more than 10 of his operas, including the first performance of a reconstructed sketch of an aria from the Marriage of Figaro. In addition, we frequently returned to the works of Gluck, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Weber. The music of over 30 other composers, mostly contemporaries of Mozart, was also regularly programmed. Rarely, we reached as far as Bach and Berlioz, some 60 years before and after Mozart.

Among our performers, we were able to feature several well-known and much-recorded artists, such as sopranos Julianne Baird and Isabel Bayrakdarian, tenor Mark Dubois, cellist Ofra Harnoy, the Prazak and the Panocha Quartets, the Tafelmusik Ensemble, and harpsichordist Colin Tilney. We frequently presented young and promising singers, and graduating members of the Opera Division at the Faculty of Music of the University of Toronto have repeatedly been our welcome guests. A number of our concerts were broadcast by FM radio stations.

Several programs were dedicated to the development of musical instruments. The evolution of piano was traced through the harpsichord, clavichord and fortepiano; and demonstrations were given on the modern flute, oboe, clarinet and trumpet and their earlier versions.