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The Dutch conductor, Ton Koopman, who is probably best known as the founder of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir, leads a concert of music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, George Frideric Handel and Franz Joseph Haydn at Venice’s Malibran Theatre. Koopman, who serves as a professor at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, conducts the highly regarded La Fenice Orchestra in a programme that consists of some of each composer's best-loved works.

The concert opens with a rendition of Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299. The composer wrote several pieces for the flute while he was in Mannheim early in 1778. This piece, however, was composed a little later that year, the last flute piece he would write during this period of his life. Mozart had moved to Paris by April 1778, when the Concerto for Flute and Harp was written following a commission from the Comte de Guines. The 22-year-old Mozart completed the commission but was apparently never paid for his work. This concerto is noteworthy because it is the only Mozart composition that is known to include music for a harp.

The programme continues with Music for the Royal Fireworks in D major, HWV 351, one of Handel's best-known pieces. The work was written at the behest of King George II of England while the composer was living and working in London. The King planned to mark the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which brought the War of the Austrian Succession to an end, with a celebratory firework display and Handel's music was conceived to accompany it. The piece's official premiere, therefore, occurred on 27 April 1749 in London’s Green Park to coincide with the fireworks display. However, a few days earlier, it had been rehearsed in public at Vauxhall Gardens, drawing a crowd of thousands.

Haydn's Symphony No. 98 in B-flat major, Hob. I:98, draws the concert to a close. This work was first performed on 2 March 1792 at Hanover Square Rooms in London. Haydn himself conducted the premiere while also playing the harpsichord. More serious and brooding than other symphonic works Haydn wrote, some consider it to be a musical tribute to Mozart, who had died the previous year. Symphony No. 98 is noteworthy for its longer-than-usual fourth movement. Indeed, its splendid finale is the longest of all the finales in Haydn's many symphonies and features a remarkable keyboard solo in its coda to bring the work to its end with a flourish.

With a highly respected conductor, Ton Koopman, taking charge of three such musically fascinating works in a stunning programme at Venice's Teatro Malibran, this concert promises a captivating evening spanning the Baroque and Classical periods.