Benjamin Günst makes his GENUIN debut with 'Submergence'-a musical deep dive between light and darkness. The German Music Competition prize winner presents an ambitious and thoughtfully conceived program. From the rhapsodic sounds of Enescu and the Baroque mysticism of Biber to Bartók's 'Sonata for Solo Violin', rarely recorded in it's original version with microtonal intervals, the violin reveals all it's many facets. Works for violin and piano are set alongside solo works, while lyrical passages alternate with moments of breathtaking virtuosity. Together with his piano partner Martin Klett, Benjamin Günst spans centuries of violin music in a fascinating musical arc.
How can music by Mozart still feel undiscovered? For this ensemble, the answer lies in the piano trios: works that, despite their composer's fame, remain surprisingly absent from the concert hall. Bringing together K. 254, K. 496 and K. 548, this first volume follows Mozart's style across twelve formative years, representing three distinct periods in his writing for piano trio, from the lingering influence of the accompanied sonata to a richly conversational chamber style.
On Mozart Horn Concertos, Ben Goldscheider joins the Munchener Kammerorchester in performances of all four concertos by Mozart, combining clarity, energy, and a strong sense of musical direction. Written for Mozart's friend, the horn player Joseph Leutgeb, these works remain central to the horn repertoire, balancing virtuosity, lyricism, with a uniquely conversational relationship between soloist and orchestra. For Goldscheider, these concertos have been a constant presence throughout his musical development, accompanying him from his early years as a horn player to major international solo appearances. This long familiarity informs an interpretation shaped by both experience and curiosity. Presented in reverse order, from the Fourth Concerto to the First, the album offers a fresh perspective on their overall arc. Ben Goldscheider makes his PENTATONE debut with this release, while the Munchener Kammerorchester appeared on the acclaimed recording of Four Seasons with Arabella Steinbacher in 2020.
A journey through time to castles, chambers and amorous settings around 1800. The irresistible soprano Shira Patchornik is a rising star on opera and concert stages. Many people are still familiar with Mozart's "Figaro". 'Al Desio di chi t'adora'. It is a song full of erotic tension addressed to her lover. And perhaps some are still familiar with Haydn's 'La vera Constanza'. The rest of this stimulating programme consists of discoveries and treasures from Italian opera of the same period, but largely forgotten. But what is it about? No opera can do without them: the maid, the lover, the chambermaid, the jealous wife, the daughter. Operas around 1800 are mostly intricate tales of intrigue and love. Sometimes dramatic, sometimes humorous, these stories inspired composers to the highest form of their art. Bella Ragazze, they become witnesses to amorous adventures, they are the projection screen for powerful men, or they themselves become energetic and vengeful protagonists. Shira Patchornik is a shooting star on the big stages and brings us key moments from opera treasures with a stupendous stage presence. She embodies characters in her own unique way and does justice to even the most breakneck coloratura. As if made for it, Mozart's rarely heard Divertimento joins the entertaining opera action: written as music for entertaining festive gatherings, it displays Mozart's characteristic humour in almost every moment.
Kotaro Fukuma presents a magnificent collection of piano transcriptions combining virtuosity and lyricism. In addition to popular plays such as Bach-Gounod's Ave Maria, Schumann-Liszt's Widmung and Wagner-Liszt's Liebestod Isolde, the program includes Fukuma's own transcript of Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and a potpourri of French songs, "Chanson Medley". by his admirers.
Mozart wrote La finta giardiniera in 1775 when he was 18 years old. It was his first staged buffo opera and centres on the lovers at the heart of the action, Sandrina – the pretend garden-girl of the title – and Belfiore. With few ensembles, Mozart channels his most intense and expressive music into arias which demonstrate a masterful ability to convey the full range of tenderness and passion. Originally staged at Glyndebourne in 2014 by Frederic Wake-Walker, this 2018 revival from La Scala is performed on period instruments with a strong cast and expertly conducted with exuberance and charm by Diego Fasolis.
Mozart: Le Nozze Di Figaro / Barenboim, Tomlinson, Rodgers, Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Performer: John Tomlinson, Phyllis Pancella, Joan Rodgers, Richard Brünner, Conductor: Daniel Barenboim, Orchestra/Ensemble: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin RIAS Chamber Chorus, "Barenboim continues to favors a forceful, big-scale reading with often deliberate speeds for the slower numbers, a musically accomplished, thought-through account of the crucial finales to Acts 2 and 4, lively treatment of the recitative, finely-honed playing of the wind, alert rhythms and an avoidance for the most part of appoggiaturas... John Tomlinson is much better suited by Figaro than he was by Alfonso, but still wants in tonal focus... but he does at all times create a lively personality, a force to be reckoned with... Sir Geraint Evans is even more individual in his characterization - listen to the recitative before his Act 4 aria - and has the more agile voice, helped by the fact that it tends more towards the baritonal." - Gramophone
A Musical Journey - Austria / Belgium: A Musical Visit to Sa
Naxos AudioVisual
DVD
$13.99Aug 28, 2012
The Places: The tour relates to the life of Mozart, from his native Salzburg to his final precarious independence in Vienna. There are glimpse of the Salzburg Church of St Peter and of the Cathedral, with which Mozart and his father, members of the musical establishment of the ruling Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg, were closely concerned. Memorials of Mozart and other composers are seen in Vienna, while a brief detour to Belgium to the idiosyncratic Musée Wiertz and to the Tournai Musée des Beaux Arts, brings another aspect to the journey. The Music: Mozart's Requiem Mass was commissioned anonymously in July 1791 by Count Franz Walsegg zu Stuppach, who sought to commemorate the recent death of his wife by the performance of a work of this kind that he might, at least by implication, claim as his own. An initial fee of sixty ducats was paid, with promise of a further sum when the Requiem was completed. But in November Mozart was taken ill and within a fortnight he was dead. His widow, Constanze, who needed the rest of the fee for the work, asked Joseph Eybler, who had assisted Mozart in rehearsals for Cose fan tutte, to finish the composition and the scoring. He later gave up the task and the unfinished score finally came into the hands of Franz Xaver Süssmayr, so that the best known form of the Requiem is that started by Mozart, continued briefly by Eybler and completed by Süssmayr.
A Musical Journey: Austria - Hohenwerfen, Weissensee, Styria, Linz, Aggstein, Hallein, Baden
Naxos AudioVisual
DVD
$9.99$13.99Save 30%May 28, 2013
AUSTRIA
The Places The places visited include Hohenwerfen Castle, the Weissensee, Styria, Linz, Aggstein, Hallein and Baden.
The Music The music chosen for this tour of Austria consists of Mozart’s Violin Concertos Nos. 3 and 5, written during his early adulthood in Salzburg.
Picture format: NTSC 4:3 Sound format: PCM Stereo 2.0 Region code: 0 (worldwide) Running time: 56 mins No. of DVDs: 1
The scenes shown all breathe an air of peace and tranquility. Starting with an evening landscape in Bohemia we move to a lake in the Tyrol to the Museo Vela with it's gesso figures Bavarian craftsmen fashioning glass and the Corniche near Cannes in the South of France. Other scenes include the ancient Chapel of St Sixtus at Eygalieres the Church of St Jakob at Tramin night in Madrid and a nocturnal view of Seville the whole culminating in the great Basilica of St Mark in Venice.
The Places The city of Nuremberg owes its importance partly to its geographical position, which made it a significant centre for trade. In spite of considerable damage, its old medieval city, now restored, remains as a monument to its importance in the late Middle Ages. By the 16th-century Nuremberg had become a centre of trade and of artistic activity. In art it could boast the presence of Albrecht Dürer and in poetry Hans Sachs and the Guild of Mastersingers, later to be celebrated by Wagner. The Music The son of Leopold Mozart, the Deputy Kapellmeister at the court of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had grown up at the archiepiscopal court, to be employed there, like his father, in a childhood and early adolescence interrupted by long concert tours as an infant prodigy. He excelled as a pianist, but was also a proficient violinist, and two of the three Violin Sonatas included here date from years in which he tried briefly to escape from Salzburg and find employment elsewhere, with the third written in 1781, when he was first establishing himself in independence in Vienna, where he was to die ten years later.
Picture format: NTSC 4:3 Sound format: PCM Stereo 2.0 / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1 Region code: 0 (worldwide) Running time: 53 mins No. of DVDs: 1
As Bram van Sambeek writes in the liner notes to his new album, bassoonists consider Mozart’s Concerto in B flat major the absolute pinnacle of their repertoire. A man of great contrasts himself, Mozart recognized the potential of the bassoon as a vehicle for expressing a wide range of moods and attitudes – from the joking and playful to the dreamily tuneful. Another composer who showed a special understanding for the instrument was Carl Maria von Weber, whose Concerto in F major doesn’t come far behind Mozart’s on the list of all-time bassoon hits. But as all bassoonists would agree, that list is on the short side – compared to the piano or the violin, the bassoon has been sadly underused by composers. How much easier then to imagine van Sambeek’s excitement when, by chance, he came across an unknown bassoon concerto. From a library in Stockholm he had requested a quintet for bassoon and strings by the Swiss-born, Swedish-based singer-conductor-composer and jack-of-most-trades Édouard Du Puy (c.?1770—1822) but, by mistake, he was sent a copy of the autograph manuscript for Du Puy’s ‘Concerto pour le Basson’ in C minor. Recognizing the importance of the discovery, van Sambeek organized for a modern edition to be made. Describing it as ‘a work which deserves a place amongst the few important bassoon concertos that we have’, he has now chosen to present it to the world alongside Mozart and von Weber, with spirited support from the acclaimed Swedish Chamber Orchestra conducted by his colleague and long-time collaborator, the oboist Alexei Ogrintchouk.
Mozart: Masonic Works - Cantatas & Funeral Music / Willens, Die Kolner Akademie
BIS
SACD
$21.99Mar 02, 2018
Following their 11-album cycle of Mozart’s piano concertos recorded with Ronald Brautigam, Die Kölner Akademie and Michael Alexander Willens in 2017 released an album with two of Mozart’s best-loved serenades: the Posthorn Serenade and Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The result was warmly received, for instance in the French magazine Classica where it was described as ‘a truly attractive disc to chase away the gloom’ and on MusicWeb-International.com: ‘Die Kölner Akademie … demonstrate once again that they are amongst the best groups in the world of period performance’. Joined by the tenor John Heuzenroeder and the male voices of the Kölner Akademie Choir, the team has now recorded the music that Mozart wrote for performance at Masonic gatherings. Mozart was himself a Mason during the last seven years of his life, and composed a number of songs and cantatas for various occasions. Best-known is probably the Masonic Funeral Music, K477, heard here in a version – ‘Meistermusik’ – devised by the Mozart scholar Philippe Autexier in an attempt to reconstruct the original performance of the piece. Also included are the four orchestral interludes to the play Thamos, König in Ägypten, fine examples of Mozart’s music in the ‘Sturm und Drang’ tradition. Thamos was written by the poet and Mason Tobias von Gebler, and parallels have frequently been drawn between it and the more overtly Masonic Magic Flute.
![Mozart: La finta giardiniera / Martin du Theil, Fasolis, Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala [Blu-ray]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3973015-2711142.jpg?v=1788498263&width=800)
![Mozart: La finta giardiniera / Martin du Theil, Fasolis, Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala [Blu-ray]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/730099012966.jpg?v=1788498264&width=800)
![Mozart: La finta giardiniera / Martin du Theil, Fasolis, Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala [Blu-ray]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3973015-2711142.jpg?v=1788498263&width=400)
