January 28, 2006	Saturday	Zilhaj 27, 1426

SALZBURG (Austria): It’s a birthday bash being heard around the world. The cobblestoned and turreted city of Mozart’s birth was leading Friday’s 250th anniversary celebrations — but the strains of the master’s music were vibrating through every corner of the planet.

Symphony orchestras and opera houses worldwide planned performances of his works. Piano students scheduled Mozart marathons and puppeteers were planning jubilee performances as hundreds of cities across five continents toasted the musical genius.

For mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager, Mozart is ‘the light I orient my life around’.

Salzburg cabbie Andrea Gautsch put it more simply on Friday: “For us, Mozart came with mother’s milk.”

Too much hoopla? Consider this: Mozart wrote his first symphonies before turning 10 and his first significant opera at 12. He was instrumental in changing opera into the form we enjoy today.

He was prolific like few others, creating more than 600 musical works before his death at 35. Other greats like Beethoven and Wagner publicly recognized their debt to him.

But he had plenty of detractors in his day.

Some history books depict his tenure in Salzburg ending ingloriously in 1781 with a kick in the bottom from a servant of Mozart’s patron, the city’s imperious archbishop, after Mozart refused to follow orders on how to compose.

For many, Mozart Central on Friday was Salzburg, where he was born on January 27, 1756.

One modern-day anti-Mozart rebel on Friday appeared to be Salzburg’s Hotel Auersperg. There, breakfast was accompanied by the soft piped-in sounds of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

But the seeming protest against too much Mozart was short-lived.

“Oops, how did that happen?” tittered waitress Anna Santiago, when asked about the choice of music. Within minutes, excerpts from a Mozart concerto were wafting through the air.

Always a trove for Mozart souvenirs, Salzburg has outdone itself this year. Store shelves are stocked with Mozart beer and wine, Mozart baby bottles, Mozart milkshakes, Mozart knickers and Mozart jigsaw puzzles — along with the usual T-shirts, calendars and coffee mugs.

Salzburg was sprinkled with posters proclaiming “Happy Birthday Mozart” on Friday and the daily Salzburger Nachrichten displayed a full-page portrait of a serious-looking ‘Wunderkind’ sitting at the harpsichord, as it proclaimed: “Salzburg celebrates its great son.”

On the Salzburg schedule were Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Philharmonic with Mozart’s Piano Concert No. 18. Later, Riccardo Muti was to lead the orchestra — and renowned singers — through their paces in a collage of his works. Many of the 12 main events, including outdoor parties, were to start in the evening.

Salzburg visitors were advised to watch the calories. One of the attraction at an open-air event was a gargantuan birthday cake weighing in at 150 kilograms — about 300 pounds.

In Salzburg’s ornate Neue Residenz museum, visitors eyed Mozart’s clothes, brush and tobacco tins as they scurried through the ‘Viva Mozart’ exhibit. Others at the interactive presentation joined in a minuet, under the watchful eyes of a dance-master, dressed in 18th century garb.—AP