If the three “Viennese classics” of this concert evening were alive today, we might know more thanks to selfies and social media: instead of guessing, we could follow Mozart’s timeline to see where, when and how often he met with his mentor Joseph Haydn or Haydn’s younger brother Michael. But would there be a post about him removing pages from his script for ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik’? Perhaps Joseph Haydn, 24 years his senior, would have shaken his head and said, ‘Oh, come on, Wolferl, no one cares anyway.’

 In the world of musicology, there are certainly some who would like to know more about that. But as a concert piece, the cheerful work has become famous without any problems in the form handed down and played by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin this evening. It is framed by a lively symphony by Michael Haydn and two first violin concertos, interpreted by Carolin Widmann: in Joseph Haydn's, the ‘emphasis is more on melodiousness than virtuosity’, while the 17-year-old Mozart immediately created a hit with his first instrumental concerto ever.