The Academy of Ancient Music was formed in 1973 by Christopher Hogwood, taking its name from one of the leading music performance organizations in eighteenth-century London. It was among the first ensembles to specialize in the performance of baroque music on period instruments. The combination of an historically informed approach and exceptionally high standards of performance have made The Academy of Ancient Music one of the world's leading chamber orchestras and ultimate authorities on HIP.

That's right, HIP, "Historically Informed Performance." At first, the notion of "Historically Informed Performance" seems a bit daunting. But it doesn't take intricate musical scores, a library of books, or a PhD in music history to fully appreciate a Historically Informed Performance. What it does take is a little bit of curiosity as well as an enthusiasm for music.

Historically Informed Performance grew out of a natural need to question and experiment. After 100 years of using 19th century-style orchestras for everything from Bach to Brahms, a group of innovative musical thinkers in the 1970s began to ask: "If the piano was not available to Bach in his time, why do we use it now when performing his works?" In fact, the keyboard Bach used was different from the one used by Mozart, and in turn the one used by Mozart was very different from Beethoven's keyboard.

What a HIP offers audiences is a chance to hear Baroque and Classical works using the instruments and performing forces available to the composer. The ensemble brings together specialists in every branch of baroque and classical performance style, playing instruments of the appropriate period in appropriate numbers. Robert Levin will perform on the forte-piano. The same instrument used in Mozart's time. According to Hogwood, "Modern instruments, which were built to be used in large auditoriums, are deluxe machines; they are rich, full, bright. Period instruments sound sweeter, leaner, less heavy. Often they are more transparent, more articulate, more rhythmic. What is significant is that the sound they produce enables us to approach more accurately the style and sound of the classical composers. We follow their conventions; we do not force them to follow ours."

But it takes more than period instruments to create a HIP. An audience in Mozart's day did not expect to be offered a concert of a few "masterpieces" as a constant formula for an evening's entertainment; they insisted on variety and novelty, with vocal and/or chamber music interspersed. It was not unusual in the 18th-century for a concert to be framed by the divided movements of a symphony to unify the delights of the evening. When Mozart first presented his "Haffner" Symphony at a concert in 1783, the first three movements were presented and then a long sequence of other items - arias, two piano concertos, two sets of solo piano variations, an improvised keyboard fugue, a movement of a serenade - were heard before the finale of the symphony. This is the experience Christopher Hogwood, Robert Levin, and the Academy of Ancient Music will offer Fine Arts Center audiences on Saturday, February 23 at 7:30pm in the Concert Hall. The all-Mozart program includes Symphony No. 35 in D Major "Haffner," and Piano Concertos No. 21 in C Major, K. 467, and No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491.