I'm Christopher Leiden, this is Open Source, speaking of Mozart, man and music, with the

modern biographer of the little prodigy from 18th century Austria, and with a master

performer of his keyboard inventions.

Brace yourself with these Mozart professionals.

You could feel you're listening to old basketball stars talking Michael Jordan Leaps and Larry

Bird threes.

In the Mozart case, it was said, it is still said.

There was literally nothing in music.

He couldn't do better than anybody else.

String quartets, like the best conversations, cinemascopic piano concertos, farcical operas

with real psychological depth, and then he could hold his audience all night improvising

at the keyboard, impossible, as they say, but it happened, and we're summoning the magic

of it at my living room piano in Boston.

Jan Swaford has documented the story in 700 pages titled Mozart, The Rain of Love, and

Robert Levin, who has recorded a vast swath of the keyboard music with Mozartian Felicity,

seems to have it all at his fingertips.

Our conversation begins around the child prodigy and what Mozart's father and teacher called

the Miracle of Salzburg.

January 24th, 1764.

Leppold is starting to train his daughter, and he assembles a music book of pieces that

she can learn.

Wolfgang hears her working on these pieces.

...