Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) is known the world over as the musical child prodigy who dazzled royalty and the general public alike as he toured Europe with his sister and father, demonstrating his genius. He wrote hundreds of works, from operas and sacred choral music to symphonies, concertos and chamber music, and he died as a young man while composing his Requiem. But not many know that he wrote some "lighter" music simply to entertain or that his songs and vocal ensembles were written primarily for friends.

Those lesser-known pieces are featured in the Department of Music's second annual Mozart birthday concert, which has two performances, Friday, Feb. 11, at 8 p.m. in the Proscenium Theatre of the Center for Theatre Arts, and Saturday, Feb. 12, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall Auditorium.

The program opens with fortepianist Malcolm Bilson playing the overture to the Mozart opera "The Abduction from the Seraglio," arranged for piano by Mozart, as well as the Sonata in B-flat major, K. 281, which was composed early in 1775 and shows the unmistakable influence of Franz Haydn. Mark Davis Scatterday then leads the Cayuga Chamber Winds (wind octet) in selections from the opera.

Soprano Judith Kellock and four of her students with fortepianist Lars Haugbro present part-songs and lieder, which represent a small portion of Mozart's entire catalog. On the program, four ensemble songs will be sung as well as two lieder: the centerpiece among Mozart's songs and the only one set to a Goethe text, Das Veilchen ("The Violet"), and Aben-dempfindung ("Sentiments at Evening"), one of his most popular songs today.

The Mozart program closes with his Piano Quartet in E-flat major, K. 493, performed by fortepianist Geoffrey Govier, violinist Eri Konii, violist Jennifer Stirling and cellist Stephanie Vial. According to Cornell music Professor Neal Zaslaw, "Mozart seems virtually to have invented the piano quartet. His interest in it may have arisen from a preference in his Viennese years for participating in chamber music as a violist."

Tickets are $5 for adults, $3 for students, and are available at the Clinton House and White Hall ticket offices. All proceeds from the performances are earmarked for the renovation of the State Theater by Historic Ithaca, a community-based, nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of the built environment in Tompkins and the adjoining counties of central New York. The theater was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996 and, in 1999, was designated an official project of the "Save America's Treasures" program by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.