Mozartwrotein1778attheage22about

Mozart wrote in 1778 at the age 22 about playing piano at a party for the Duchesse de Chabot during his first trip to Paris to look for work: “After an hour’s wait in the cold I began to play upon a miserable and wretched pianoforte. The most annoying thing about it was that Madame and all the gentlemen never for one moment interrupted their occupations, but continued the whole time, so it was to the chairs and the table that I was playing. I had begun some of Fisher’s Variations. I played half and rose. Then a burst of applause. Give me the best piano in Europe and for an audience of people who neither understand nor wish to understand music, who feel nothing with me that I am playing, and I lose all joy in performing.” [From Francois Lesure “Music and Art in Society” (1968)]