'The Disneyland of classical music' ... The Mirabelle Garden and the Universitat Mozarteum in Salzburg. Photograph: Gaetan Bally
What is it about Mozart? A lot of classical music bores me rigid, but play me anything by Mozart, and I'm hooked. People bang on about his virtuosity, yet it's his simplicity that wows me most. For sheer hummability, there's nobody to beat him. Even his saddest music lifts your spirits, and that's why I was so keen to introduce him to my kids. But how best to do this? Simple - whisk them abroad for a five-day intensive course ...
Don't get me wrong. I've no desire to turn my children into musical prodigies. My eight-year-old son plays the piano, but he's far more keen on kicking a ball around. My four-year-old daughter loves to dance, but she likes CBeebies as much as ballet. I simply wanted to show them something that's always made me happy. And I wanted to find out if Mozart would make them happy too.
I'd been playing them Mozart for a while at home, and the results were fairly promising. They seemed to like him just as much as Abba or the Beatles. They could even sing some of the tunes. Now I was keen to give them both a real treat, but how? A conventional concert seemed too dry, a full length opera far too formal. And then I remembered Salzburg.
If you like Mozart and you've never been to Salzburg, you don't know what you're missing. Mozart's birthplace is the Disneyland of classical music, with all sorts of orchestral events throughout the city, all year round. Smothered in Alpine kitsch and besieged by Japanese tourists, it's not a place for po-faced purists, but for a couple of kids who've heard a bit of Mozart, I reckoned a flying visit might be just the thing to turn them into real fans.
And so this week we set off, the four of us - my wife and me, and our son and daughter - on a five day trip to Mozart's hometown in the foothills of the Alps. You can fly straight there from Gatwick with British Airways, but there are a lot more flights to Munich, so we flew BA from Heathrow to Munich and travelled on to Salzburg by train. The flights cost us £500 but the train journey, with Deutsche Bahn, only cost €58 return for all four of us. The train trip took about an hour and a half - around the same time as the flight - but it was great fun for the kids, and a thrilling route into the Alps.
So now we're in our hotel, a cosy family run place called Hotel Bergland. We've got a big old room with painted wooden furniture like something straight out of the Brothers Grimm. My wife and I are both shattered, but the kids are full of beans. As we turn out the lights, I wonder if they'll be quite so keen on my Mozart itinerary. I'll let you know tomorrow.
