One of the highlights of the 1956 Mozart Week was the concert, which brought together Herbert von Karajan, Clara Haskil and the Philharmonia Orchestra London. Karajan knew how to project the qualities of the orchestra using the pieces he selected. The slow introduction of the Symphony No 39 gave him an early opportunity to demonstrate the precision and aural splendor of the orchestra. Those listening to the Piano Concerto No 20 experienced an enchanting hour with Clara Haskil at the piano. On no other occasion did she play the slow movement in such a calm and heartfelt manner so expressively, as on that evening. In the slow movement, above which hung a “frisson of eternal beauty”, the artist managed to excel herself. Now, this historic concert is available on this release.

In addition to some 47 keyboard sonatas, Haydn wrote a variety of other pieces including arrangements of earlier orchestral or chamber works, and dances intended for occasional use. The 10 kleine Klavierstucke (10 Little Piano Pieces) contain five symphonic movements- including the second movement from one of his most popular, No. 53 in D major, known as L’Imperiale- a single movement from a string quartet and three extracts from his witty Eszterhaza opera La vera constanza. The dance movements were popular in Vienna’s many ballrooms. This is the penultimate release in Jeno Jando’s project of recording the complete solo piano music by Joseph Haydn. Of the complete piano sonatas release, Audiophile Audition commented: “Jando is every inch the professional, his years of experience and his muscular playing full these [works] with vivacious life.”

Alpha continues to explore its catalogue and this year again offers a wide variety of combinations. After a box assembling the gems of the Baroque era (Masters of the Baroque - Alpha 372), the piano is now given pride of place. The box set Masters of the Piano brings together 10 albums in which great contemporary interpreters (Nelson Goerner, Alexander Lonquich, François-Frédéric Guy, Eric Le Sage, Edna Stern, Anna Vinnitskaya) retrace three centuries of creation on the piano, from Bach to Shostakovich, by way of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Debussy. The piano will also be at the heart of a 7-release box set devoted to Alexei Lubimov’s recordings. Fortepiano, piano, prepared piano . . . the Russian musician has distinguished himself in every repertoire. Finally, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven, the Beethoven Rediscovered box highlights 16 albums that offer a chance to rediscover his symphonies, concertos and sonatas on period instruments, the fortepiano, etc.

Past praise of the previously released volumes included in this set:

Beethoven/Liszt: Complete Symphonies / Martynov

Yury Martynov is one of the few pianists around with the technical resources, musical grasp and conviction to recreate this legacy persuasively. In doing so, he amply demonstrates its continued usefulness and vitality. It seems safe to say that he has given us the Beethoven-Liszt cycle for our time, and one unlikely soon to be superseded.

– Gramophone

Beethoven: Piano Concertos No 1 & 2 / Schoonderwoerd, Ensemble Cristofori

Passagework is never rattled off mechanically, always expressively shaped. The slow movements are both memorably beautiful. The recording is close, in a richly resonant acoustic; everything is extremely vivid, with Schoonderwoerd’s breathing often audible, though not distractingly. Mandatory listening for anyone with the slightest interest in Beethoven performance practice.

– Fanfare

Joseph Haydn is regarded as the "father of the symphony" and the "father of the string quartet" for his more than 100 symphonies and almost 70 string quartets. Haydn also produced numerous operas, masses, concertos, piano sonatas and other compositions. His oratorios The Creation and The Seasons, both composed in the last decade of Haydn’s active compositional life, are his most widely known and admired choral compositions today, just as they were in his lifetime. Recordings from some of Haydn’s most formidable interpreters are showcased on this extensive release, including the Bach Collegium Stuttgart, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Helmuth Rilling, and more.

REVIEW:

For this set Hänssler have grouped together three major choral works of Haydn from their back catalogue of the many recordings made by the noted German choral conductor Helmuth Rilling. Rilling was the founder of The Oregon Bach Festival, and such musical ensembles as the Gächinger Kantorei and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, both of whom appear on these recordings. As filler, some works recorded by the lesser-known Frieder Bernius have also been included.

The first two discs contain Rilling’s 1993 Die Schöpfung. With Rilling this great work proceeds naturally with no hint of forcing the music to wring more drama out of it. He provides tempi that are very solicitous towards his singers. His approach presents the work with a more smiling aspect than one usually encounters. In this aspect Rilling comes closer than anyone else to Leonard Bernstein’s earlier recording of the work with the New York Philharmonic. Rilling’s soloists are a fine team topped by Christiane Schäfer’s exquisitely shapely tones. She makes a lively Gabriel, molding the lines of her recitatives with grace. She provides a heavenly account of “Nun beut die flur” and manages to avoid sounding tweety in the process. Michael Schade is a sunny-sounding Uriel, as he was in the John Eliot Gardiner recording two years later. He is especially good at enunciating his text and producing his sound to evolve from the words, a rare achievement these days. His coloratura is perfectly executed, which makes me place him among the most successful portrayals of Uriel in the catalogue. Andreas Schmidt is a fine Rapaehel. His voice sounds warm and pleasing, yet he suffuses his music with sufficient gravitas for an ideal balance. He manages the awkward intervals of “Rollend in schäumenden” with ease. The choir and orchestra play splendidly and there is a decent sense of ambience to the recording.

The fifth disc brings the oratorio version of The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross. Maestro Rilling is definitely back on best form here and he leads a really good team of soloists. The disc is rounded off by two shorter items as filler, which proved to be among the real highlights of the set. Both the Responsoria de Venerabili and the Ave Regina Coelorum are bright and fresh-sounding, led by the sure hand of the accomplished Frieder Bernius. The Württemberg ensemble is wonderfully responsive to his lead with a standout solo by Inga Nielsen in the Ave Regina. Nielsen was still in the coloratura phase of her career when this was recorded and her voice exhibits a glow that would lessen as she started heading into more dramatic roles a few years later. This is a superb example of her voice at its zenith. Hearing it makes me want to search out a copy of the Nelson Mass which accompanied these two works on its original release.

--MusicWeb International

Although Giuseppe Tartini was taught the first rudiments of music at the College of the Padri dell Scuole Pie in Capodistria, and may have received lessons in counterpoint from the Franciscan Bohuslav Cernohorsky in Assisi, many elements give the impression that the boy had an education that was anything but ‘academic,’ and that the future ‘maestro delle nazioni’ largely taught himself. However, there does exist a declared model for the music of Tartini, at least for a certain period: that of Corelli. His output seems dominated initially by the influence of his great predecessor in terms of both language and structure. The reference to folk music in his music is also obvious. Another interesting element in the sonatas presented on this release is the presence of mottoes of varying length placed next to the incipits of certain movements, and often written in a ciphered cuneiform alphabet invented by the composer. These are poetic quotations, mostly drawn from the works of Metastasio, although not all of them have been identified. At the end of this recording is one of Tartini’s very rare vocal pieces, the last composition copied into MS 1888/1. The poem Solitario bosco ombroso, based on a clearly Petrarchan model and on the classical antecedents of Tibullus and Propertius, was published for the first time by the poet Paolo Rolli in London in 1727, in a musical setting by Rolli himself.

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin returns to PENTATONE with Joseph Haydn’s opera L’isola disabitata (The Desert Island), together with an excellent quartet of vocalists.

Officially called an azione teatrale, L’isola is a serious opera about love, loss and misunderstanding with a happy ending, set on an exotic deserted island. Special about this opera is that Haydn chose orchestral accompaniment for the entire work, with colourful and dramatic accompagnato recitatives. In Haydn’s printed score, many of the elaborate instrumental sections were deliberately cut, because he feared that they demanded too much from the players, and that some audiences may not have been cultured enough to fully appreciate them. Special about this recording is that these parts have all been reinstated, using a recent edition by Thomas Busse.

The seasoned players of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, led by Bernhard Forck, play this lavish score with fervour and swing, while Anett Fritsch (Costanza), Sunhae Im (Silvia), Krystian Adam (Gernando) and André Morsch (Enrico) offer an equally virtuosic vocal delivery.

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin is generally seen as one of the best period-instruments ensembles of today, and has a substantial PENTATONE discography.

REVIEW:

Haydn's opera L'isola disabitata ("The Uninhabited Island") was premiered in 1779. In one act, it was termed an azione per musica, suggesting a more compact work than an opera seria, and it has just four voice parts. The quartet of singers is fine, led with pleasant lightness by mezzo-soprano Sunhae Im in the lead role of the abandoned Costanza. The main attraction, though, is the work of the venerable Akademie für alte Musik, which has kept itself vibrant and relevant since its days behind the Iron Curtain. With Bernhard Forck leading the group from the first violinist's chair, they completely avoid the mechanical quality that often infests Baroque groups that move into Classical repertory; they grasp the essential forward-moving trajectory of the music and don't linger too much on the serviceable but ordinary arias. A totally satisfying Haydn opera release.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)