Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The International Mozarteum Foundation said Thursday that it has discovered two more works composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The previously unknown works are piano pieces composed by a young Mozart, the Salzburg-based foundation said in a brief e-mail statement. The foundation declined to provide more details Thursday, saying specifics would be made public during a presentation in Salzburg on Aug. 2. During the event, Austrian musician Florian Birsak will perform the pieces on an original Mozart piano.

Mozart has a new record -- and this one isn't pressed into vinyl. Organizers of last year's series of festivals, exhibitions, concerts and conferences to celebrate the 250th anniversary of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth said Tuesday the jubilee drew 1.2 million tourists to Austria -- a record for a single festival. The anniversary year is still winding down and won't be completed until the end of the month.

Seven films featured as part of last year's New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna to mark the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth will be shown next week as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival. The six features and a short were commissioned by Peter Sellars, the Vienna festival's artistic director, who sought international filmmakers who would deal in highly personal ways with such Mozartian themes as transformation, forgiveness and recognition of the dead.

A lot of people got a distorted view of Mozart from Peter Shaffer's play "Amadeus" and Milos Forman's popular screen adaptation. Now comes the truth, or at least as close to it as we can probably hope to get. Making its debut at the start of this year's 250th anniversary of the composer's birth is "In Search of Mozart," a documentary by award-winning filmmaker Phil Grabsky ("Muhammad Ali: Through the Eyes of the World") that will premiere Wednesday at the Barbican in London.

Have scientists found Mozart's skull? Researchers said Tuesday that they'll reveal the results of DNA tests in a documentary airing Sunday on Austrian television as part of a year of celebratory events marking the composer's 250th birthday. The tests were done last year by experts at the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Innsbruck, and the results will be made public in "Mozart: The Search for Evidence," to be screened by state broadcaster ORF.

It's a Mozart mystery as haunting as his "Requiem" -- and apparently it won't be solved anytime soon. After months of sophisticated DNA sleuthing reminiscent of a "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" episode, forensics experts admitted on national television that they still can't say with certainty whether an aged skull is that of the composer, as some believe.

A Mozart manuscript that was torn in half by his widow will be reconstituted this year as part of celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth, the British Library said Wednesday. Mozart's widow, Constanze, tore the work in two in 1835 to boost its value, giving or selling the upper portion to a court musician, Julius Leidke. She sent the lower portion to a local government official in Bavaria.

THERE'S no escaping Mozart here this year. Austria's celebration of its native son's 250th birthday is an artistic and commercial extravaganza calculated to flood the country with tourists and to awe audiences with myriad performances, seminars and tours.

KMZT-FM (105.1) calls itself K-Mozart, and now it is living up to its name. In addition to broadcasting Mozart programming from Austria today through Friday, the classical music station is planning to feature works by Mozart every weeknight at 7 for three months, beginning Monday with his first piano concerto. That will be followed on successive nights by the other 26 piano concertos, then his other concertos and symphonies.

CECILIA BARTOLI is replacing Renee Fleming in Friday's internationally broadcast concert celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. Fleming was to have sung the aria "Ch'io mi scordi di te?" along with the motet "Exsultate jubilate" and the duet "La ci darem la mano" from "Don Giovanni" with baritone Thomas Hampson. The International Mozarteum Foundation, organizer of the concert, said in a statement that Fleming withdrew for "vocal reasons" related to the first aria.