The 2020 Salish Sea Early Music Festival presents “Mozart Quartets” featuring a rare opportunity to hear the complete Mozart quartets for flute and strings performed on period instruments with 8-keyed flutist Jeffrey Cohan, violinist Carrie Krause, violist Victoria Gunn and cellist Caroline Nicolas on Sunday, Feb. 2 at 8 p.m. at the Orcas Adventist Fellowship Church at 107 Enchanted Forest Road in Eastsound.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) wrote four flute quartets between 1777 and 1786 or later. They borrow material from French folk song, an opera by Giovanni Paisiello which Mozart had heard in Prague, and works of Mozart’s own and his friend Franz Anton Hoffmeister, and are by far the most well known of all works for this combination of instruments. Mozart’s unfortunate professed distaste for the flute was possibly a reflection of his feelings for De Jean, the rich amateur flutist and surgeon with the Dutch East India Company who commissioned much of his flute music, to who Mozart had been introduced to by his friend the Mannheim virtuoso flutist Johann Baptist Wendling. Distracted by efforts to compose an opera, Mozart had difficulty devoting time to the commissioned works in a timely manner and there was some disgruntlement with regards to reimbursement. Nevertheless, the quartets,