The Austrian Mint have embarked upon another of their silver coin programs and this time they’re celebrating Austrias most famous person.  A three-coin 0.900 silver set, one will be released every year until 2017. They chart the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the most highly regarded musical geniuses in history. Each looks at a time in his life and a work from the period in question, starting with this 2015 coin titled Wunderkind, which features his early life. The obverse carries a portrait of the man when he was still a boy, while the reverse depicts a scene from Bastien und Bastienne (1768), a comic opera written when he was just 12 years old.

Future coins are Amadeus (2016), which looks at his short adult career and life with Don Giovanni (1787) on the reverse, and Mozart (2017) which looks at his musical afterlife with the Magic Flute (1791). Each coin carries an inscribed signature fragment, one word of his name on each coin, which when placed in the collectors box will spell out his name in full. The coin comes in the usual Austrian Mint red box, but for around €45 you can purchase a nice box to hold the set. At 18g of fine silver (in 20g of 0.900), it isn’t huge, but the price of €49.50 is pretty reasonable, especially now the Euro is very weak. Mintage is a pretty large 50,000, but that’s the norm for at lot of commemoratives in Europe. Designed by the mints star team of Mag. Helmut Andexlinger and Thomas Pesendorfer, it should have lots of appeal to fans of this incredible artist. Available to order now.

MINTS DESCRIPTION

Wolfgang is the first coin in the Austrian Mint’s three-coin series dedicated to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, each of which explores a different phase in the short but prolific life of Austria’s most famous son. Celebrating Mozart the wunderkind, or child prodigy, this is a very special coin for a very special boy, whose genius lives on more than two centuries after his death.

Born on 27 January 1756 in Salzburg, the son of a musician, teacher and minor composer, Mozart showed such musical talent from an early age that his father Leopold gave up composing to focus on his son’s musical development. The coin’s obverse features a wonderfully enigmatic portrait of Wolfgang from that period, painted in 1763. Although from a bourgeois background, Mozart is dressed in aristocratic clothes that were a gift from Empress Maria Theresa. The word ‘Wolfgang’ lies beneath the portrait so that, when placed alongside the other two coins in the series, the three coins together spell the composer’s full name. The coin’s reverse shows a scene from Bastien und Bastienne, a one-act comic opera written by the twelve-year-old Mozart in 1768.

SPECIFICATION

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