Mozart 252 is a 2008 album by Michael Nyman (his 58th release) with the Michael Nyman Band, Hilary Summers, and Andrew Slater, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth.
The album also includes "In Re Don Giovanni," Nyman's first composition for the band, which is based on the first fifteen bars of "Madamina, il catalogo è questo" from Don Giovanni, six selections from Peter Greenaway's film, Drowning by Numbers, in which he was instructed to base the music on the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante K. 364, and two duets and an aria from Nyman's television opera, Letters, Riddles and Writs, in this recording featuring bass Andrew Slater as Leopold Mozart and contralto Hilary Summers as Wolfgang.
"Trysting Fields" is built out of every appoggiatura from the movement in order (each repeated three times), and ends with a bit of "rock and roll".
"O my Dear Papa" (also referred to as "O My Dear Son") is translations of letters between Wolfgang and Leopold by Emily Anderson and "I Am an Unusual Thing" her translation of a riddle and a reported conversation with Constanze Mozart, while the text of "Profit and Loss", describing Mozart's earnings and expenses, is written by Jeremy Newson, co-librettist and director of the television opera.
"O My Dear Son" is based on "O Osiris und Isis" from Die Zauberflöte, and "I Am an Unusual Thing" draws music from Mozart's "Haydn Quartets," while "Profit and Loss" overlays "In Re Don Giovanni" and then goes in a darker direction based on the same material.