Mozart's string quintets, and particularly the last four (K 515, K 516, K 593 and K 614) are often cited as being among the finest examples of his chamber music. The musicologist Charles Rosen has drawn attention to the fact that the quintets always appeared shortly after the completion of a series of quartets, as if the medium represented a more ideal and final realisation of the composer’s musical thoughts. It is not, however, a question of quartets with a fifth, ‘extra’ part. Even the early K174 possesses a striking complexity, and as a group the quintets employ a great variety of textures: dialogues between two instruments with three-part accompaniment from the others, the alternation of two string trios (two violins and viola or two violas and cello), or violin duets, alongside viola duets, accompanied by the cello. The performances of these intricate masterworks by the Orlando Quartet and Nobuko Imai, have been highly regarded ever since their original releases and were for instance described as 'magisterial and gripping' on AllMusic.com. They now appear in this box set, accompanied by a fourth disc which brings together three further Mozart quintets for varying constellations: the charming Horn Quintet from 1782, the extraordinary Clarinet Quintet from seven years later and the Quintet for piano and winds which Mozart in a letter to his father in 1784 described as 'the best thing I have written so far'. Performing these works here are eminent musicians including Radovan Vlatkovic, Martin Fröst and Stephen Hough.

The present release is the second volume of Roman Rabinovich’s complete cycle of Haydn Piano Sonatas. Rabinovich has performed throughout Europe and the United States in venues such as London’s Wigmore Hall, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, and the Millennium Stage of Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Lauded as ‘a master of tone-color’ (International Piano, 2018), Rabinovich made his Israel Philharmonic début under the baton of Zubin Mehta at age ten. He was a top prize winner at the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in 2008.

The Alexander String Quartet turns its attention to Mozart’s last years, beginning with this recording of the final four quartets (the first of a three-volume set which will add his other great chamber works from that period). Eric Bromberger’s liner notes are prefaced by comments from ASQ violist Paul Yarbrough, excerpted here: “Taken as a whole, Mozart’s works for string quartet, piano quartet, viola quintet, and clarinet quintet are a monumental accomplishment, as they codified the evolution of classical chamber music. He had taken Haydn’s brilliant efforts with the string quartet and elevated and broadened the genre, while adhering to Haydn’s formal and conversational precedent. But however much Mozart’s late chamber works conform, they are never “conformist.” They still have the capacity to be stunningly original, and even, especially for the listeners of the time, shocking.” Now in its 35th season, the Alexander String Quartet’s discography includes major cycles by Bartok, Kodaly, Mozart, Shostakovich, and Beethoven. ASQ is also an important advocate of new music, with over 35 commissions and premieres.

Paisiello wrote the music for Le gare generose to be premiered at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples in the spring of 1786. The near-total absence of gags and slapstick routines plus the constant tension experienced by Bastiano and Gelinda who are on the run from alleged debts under false identities, suggest this opera belongs to the semiserio genre. This opera features middle-class characters rather than the usual aristocrats. Paisiello’s score features the arsenal of comic devices he would later employ in La Scuffiara or La Molinara. Music closely reflects the action on stage: in the duet for Bastiano and Gelinda “Scopa, scopa, netta e spazza”, what the violins play resembles the broom sweeping while the couple quarrel; it also reflects the physical nature of the characters and the images in the sung text by employing humorous madrigal-like devices – thus phrasing that rises and falls depicts butterflies in the first aria for Berlicco or a bee in the aria for Gelinda. In the Andante con moto of Finale I when the couple pretend to work while eavesdropping on the conversation between Dull and Berlicco, the orchestral figures at the beginning are intended to resemble the actions “rassettar” and “scopettar”, after which the musical emphasis shifts from action to emotional state – in this case, growing anxiety. Although Gare generose is a strange combination of the comic and the serious, it was remarkably successful. The success of the opera lasted until 1800 on the European circuit and with 37 different stagings, Gare generose is Paisiello’s twelfth most-performed opera.

The majority of Haydn's concertos for keyboard and orchestra are thought to have been composed for the organ. The three that were not have been included on this disc, together with the 'Concerto in D major, Hob.XVIII/2' which was most probably intended for the organ, but is often performed on other keyboard instruments since the solo part makes no use of the pedals. They are all composed before 1l784, around the time that Mozart wrote his first masterpieces in the genre, and it is tempting to think that, having heard Mozart's concertos, Haydn decided that he could not possibly compete in this area. After all, as one of the great pianists of the era, Mozart's concertos became the occasion for a breathtaking display of invention and virtuosity. Haydn on the other hand did not as a rule perform his concertos, leaving room in the limelight to other musicians. The concertos on the present disc thus , in a manner of speaking, show us an alternative route for the piano concerto as a genre. Here they are interpreted by Ronald Brautigam, who with his 11-volume series of Haydn's complete works for solo keyboard has proven himself one of todays most gengenial interpreters of the composer's music. He is ably backed by one of the most interesting period-instrument bands at the moment, Concerto Copenhagen, directed by Lars Ulrik Mortensen.

2020 saw the release of the first installment in this three-album traversal of Beethoven’s violin sonatas – a disc which has garnered distinctions such as Choc de Classica and Cum Laude (Luister), with performances that ‘wed classical verve to a profoundly Romantic spirit’ (Gramophone) in ‘recordings that are conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing’ (BBC Music Magazine). As Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen open the second disc, they do so with the iconic Spring Sonata, Op. 24. Completed in 1801, the work proved immediately popular with a second edition appearing only months after the first publication. There were also numerous arrangements for a variety of forces – including a song based on motifs from the sonata’s slow movement. Soon after completing Op. 24, Beethoven began work on a set of three sonatas of which the first two are included on this album. Musically the Op. 30 sonatas continue the development that had begun with the Spring Sonata towards a contrast-rich, symphonic style. Beethoven originally planned to end the first and shortest of the three with the expansive movement that later became the finale of the great Kreutzer Sonata. As this would clearly have ruined the proportions of the work, he eventually replaced it with a set of variations. Closing this album is the second sonata of Op. 30, in C minor. It is the most important of the set; a genuine Grande Sonate in four movements, and an early example of Beethoven’s ‘heroic’ style.

REVIEW:

This is one of the most responsive partnerships I’ve heard in these sonatas, and I’ve heard some really outstanding ones. The togetherness of these two artists in precision of timing and harmonic vibration in matters of phrasing and dynamics is an amazing thing to experience.

-- Fanfare

The first phrase of Reger’s Op.141 Serenade plunges the listener into the world of joyful music-making among friends circa 1780. The immediate modulation to a higher key in the second phrase brings us back to the more knowing world of late-Romanticism, and Reger thereafter moves between the two with great charm and no little skill. Light and effervescent the temper of these serenades may be but they also make considerable demands on their performers to keep up with the composer’s breathless turn of phrase and invention; these Italian musicians are fully up to speed. The Larghetto slow movement of Op.141 is an expressive high-point on the disc and, like much of Reger’s music, it is far too little known given its tender appeal to the general listener. With these two works, Reger was evidently paying homage to a Classical spirit whichfound its fulfilment – at least in this unusual instrumentation – in Beethoven’s Serenade. The six movements find the young Beethoven at his most carefree and effervescent: even the Andante and variations (which would become a conduit for profound thoughts later in his career) is as light as air and bubbling with melody and witty repartee. Anyone who only knows Beethoven from the symphonies, sonatas and concertos has a very pleasant surprise in store with this disc. Andrea Oliva is principal flautist of the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, and has made many notable recordings with them and their music director, Sir Antonio Pappano, but he has also enjoyed a successful career as a soloist: according to Sir James Galway, he is ‘one of the best flutists of his generation, a shining star in the world of the flute.’ He has recorded Bach sonatas with Angela Hewitt and the chamber music of Saint-Saëns (BC95165) and Dutilleux (BC94738) with his Santa Cecilia colleagues, both released by Brilliant Classics.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach published the first collection in his series 'for Connaisseurs and Amateurs' in 1779, at the age of 65, and the sixth and final in 1787, a year before his death. Throughout the series he continues to develop the three genres which are featured in it – sonata, rondo and fantasia. In the sixth collection, the fantasias and rondos continue to resemble each other in structure and in stylistic features: abrupt tempo changes, disruptive rhythms, and constant harmonic non sequiturs. Bach gives them ample dimensions, but as in previous collections he continues to reduce the length of the sonatas, to the point that Sonata No. 1 is the shortest work of the collection, although it is in three distinct movements. On this amply-filled album, Miklós Spányi also includes four other works from Carl Philipp's last decade which in various ways underline the composer's boundless curiosity. The Sonata in G major, Wq 65/48 was composed for an experimental keyboard instrument with a bowing device coupled to it – a 'Bogenclavier' – while Bach in the set of variations Wq 118/9 gives us his own take on La Folia, the harmonic scheme that almost a century earlier had inspired composers such as Corelli, Marin Marais and Vivaldi, as well as his own father, in the famous ‘Peasant Cantata’.