Advantages: Excellent performances in a perfect setting
Disadvantages: Very minor quibbles

...Background: When it comes to prodigious over-achievers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has to be placed somewhere at the top of the list. Despite his tragically short life from 1756-1791, his musical creativity has assured him of eternal fame as long as human civilisation performs Western classical music. But when one considers Mozart's background, one can understand where his genius came from. His father Leopold Mozart was a virtuoso violinist whose treatise on violin playing is still a standard read for any aspiring violin student today. It is also worth considering how things might have been different had female instrumentalists been able to pursue a professional career as adults - as his beloved sister Nannerl was no mean keyboard player, but obviously once she became an adult it was not really considered the done thing for her... Read review

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Advantages: Animation , the classic music
Disadvantages: None

...Made in the 1940's "Fantasia" is nothing short of a monument as a sign of great Filmmaking. As the movie cover says, "This extraordinary blend of magnificent music and animation is an exhilarating sight and sound experience". I couldn't describe it better myself. The movie starts out as an elegant musical performance that is lead by Conductor Leopold Stokowski and The Philadelphia Orchestra. He explains every piece you hear will hear in this fantastic animated feature. There are works by John Sebastian Bach, a great German composer such as Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky, The Nutcracker Waltz by Pyotr Tchaikovsky , famous Russian composer that is recognized all over the world, all accompanied by great Disney Animation. There is also a segment featuring... Read review

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Advantages: You learn more about a genius.
Disadvantages: If you love Mozart - rather go to Salzburg.

...Here we go again, another review about my home country - i love it! ;) This time i will tell you about Mozart's Gedenkstätte in Vienna. As most of you know Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) was born in Salzburg, therefore you will find more information (his birth place, statues, memorial places) about him there, not necessarily in Vienna. In 1781 Mozart moved from his home city Salzburg to Vienna, where he lived at various addresses. Only one of these houses he used to live is famous in Vienna - the "Figarohaus" which you can find in "Domgasse". Mozart decided to move to the capitol city, because it was more openminded and cosmopolitain than Salzburg. People there were more tolerant and that was what tempted Mozart. It was there where Mozart started his independent existence of being an artist. Mozart stayed... Read review

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Advantages: Effortlessly knowledgable and unfailingly entertaining.
Disadvantages: Landon is a prolific writer, so if you get hooked the addiction could be seriously expensive.

...In the final month of 1791 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the greatest star in the story of Western music blinked out, amidst a storm of controversy and speculation. It was this intrigue, which has sparked debate ever since, especially following the impact of the play and film of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. So was it really Salieri in the drawing room with the poison? Eminent musicologist H.C.Robbins Landon thinks not. His gripping ‘1791: Mozart’s Last Year’ refutes Shaffer’s portrait of the composer as a prodigiously gifted, drunken buffoon and casts doubt on the rumours which circulated after Mozart’s death that he was poisoned by his rival, Antonio Salieri. Landon is one of the most prominent scholars in the field of 18th Century music. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1926, in 1949 he founded...