Israeli pianist talks about his love of Mozart

• Published date: 06 October 2021
• Author: BARRY DAVIS
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The fortysomething Swiss-based Israeli conductor, pianist will be on the podium at the Hechal Hatarbut auditorium in Rishon LeZion on October 7 and 9, and at the Shlomo Lahat Opera House in Tel Aviv on October 10, when he conducts the curtain raiser of the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon LeZion (ISO)'s 33rd season.

The program features the overture from Mozart's ever-popular Cosi fan tutte opera buffa, followed by his Piano Concerto No. 17 which, too, gets pretty frequent airings around the world. The evening closes with another crowd-pleaser, Dvorak's stirring Symphony No. 9 in E minor, aka "From the New World." All powerful and emotive stuff.

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Greilsammer is not about to make any apologies for his Mozart "fetish."

"His music is the love of my life," he chuckles. It has been a lifelong love affair. "I remember hearing Mozart's music for the first time, when I was four or five years old. It was in Jerusalem, and my mother put on an old record – I thought it was an antique – of Mozart's piano music. I think it was [now 74-year-old American pianist-conductor Murray] Perahia playing. I remember feeling a wow moment. It was so beautiful. It was a very naive reaction. I had chills and a new feeling. It began so early for me."

Still, Greilsammer's path through life and music took on some sharp bends and unforeseen offshoots, and that childhood formative experience dropped a little by the wayside. "I got into other things, and I would say that Mozart was forgotten for a while."

It was as a student at The Juilliard School performing arts conservatory in New York that he rediscovered his first love.

"There I got back into Mozart really powerfully," he recalls. "I just felt that his music was a mother tongue for me. It was as simple as that. I love Chopin, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff, but with Mozart, I feel it is my language. I just love him."

That ardor soon found its way out of the classroom and onto the global classical music circuit. "I started performing in public, and really quickly that became one of the important things I did." Word got around. "People and orchestras began to identify me as someone who was very close to Mozart's music."

The next stage was getting some of that dexterity and intimacy with Mozart's scores down for posterity. Greilsammer went for broke. "I recorded CDs of Mozart's music and I played all his...