Classical Music

At the tender age of nine, Felix Klieser dreamed of being able to play Mozart's horn concertos. Today, 18 years later, that dream has finally come true and Felix Klieser now performs on the world's foremost concert stages, playing the very works which are part of any horn player's core repertoire. Yet he took his time before recording all four of Mozart's horn concertos: only after releasing three successful albums and winning an ECHO Klassik award and the Leonard Bernstein Award did he go to Salzburg, in September 2018, to record them with the famous Camerata Salzburg ensemble. Now, the results of that labor are presented on this stunning release.

Also available on Blu-ray

This film is a journey with the famous pianist Yuja Wang. With more than 120 performances a year, she lives a nomadic lifestyle. The exploration of Yuja’s wanderings is a travelogue of exciting venues, glitzy cities and encounters with extraordinary artists, such as Gustavo Dudamel, Gauthier Capucon and Leonidas Kavakos and personalities of other professional horizons but there is also a downside: fatigue, jet lag, pressure, doubts, hostilities, disorientation, and loneliness. With a bittersweet reference to the transience of life, the film reveals the invisible that complements the visible and shows us this artist in a very personal way. “Pianists have to be alone all the time, and it’s hard, it’s lonely. Being a musician is almost like a very isolated life, and the only time you actually get to communicate is on stage with music. It’s not a bad thing. I think being solitary, it really allows us to think about life and to think about why people write this music. [...] It makes you start to wonder about things that are beneath the surface.” (Yuja Wang)

DETAILS:

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Filmed in: High Definition
Sound: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Languages/Subtitles: English; Ger, Fr, KOR, JPN
Region: 0 (Worldwide)

Classical Music

Classical Music

Bach: Symphonies / Harpsichord Concerto

Hardly any other event during Mozart Week has remained so vividly in visitors' memories as the 1994 production of Ombra felice. Mozart's creative excess in the field of opera is evident not only in fragments of stage works such as Zaide KV 344, L'oca del Cairo KV 422 and Lo sposo deluso KV 430, but also in the more than seventy arias and ensembles he composed as individual works. Some of these are abandoned or unfinished drafts, as Mozart's singers (or sometimes Mozart himself) were not entirely satisfied with them, while others were contributions to foreign opera productions, which were often performed in the form of pasticcios at that time. This broad compilation thus provides a good overview of Mozart's aria compositions.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt is credited with making historical performance practice respectable in Salzburg as well. The memorable debut concert of 1980 was the prelude to a long success story that culminated in the Mozart Week 2006, when Nikolaus Harnoncourt was Artist in Residence and gave his acclaimed ceremonial address on 27 January on the occasion of the 250th birthday of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart. The inaugural concert and rehearsals from 2006 can be heard on this album.This 3-CD edition covers the era of Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his influence on the interpretation of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Between 1980 and 2006, the conductor succeeded in sensitising both musicians and audiences to new playing and listening habits and evolved from a pioneer of historical performance practice to an acclaimed maestro.

When Nikolaus Harnoncourt made his debut at the Mozart Week Salzburg on 27 January 1980, concert audiences were at the feet of conductors like Karl Böhm. In those days, beautiful sound and melody were the central themes of an interpretation. Following instructions in the original scores, Harnoncourt had articulation, tempi, melodies and accompanying parts played with a new style and emphasis. The reactions to the concert in Salzburg at that time were varied. In addition to strong slurs, there were also effusive hymns of praise. 20 years later, Nikolaus Harnoncourt became Artist in Residence at the Mozart Week 2006 and was the keynote speaker on the occasion of the 250th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the meantime, his ideas of historical performance practice had spread worldwide and developed into the basis of a new generation of concerts and musicians. In this CD edition, his inaugural concert of 1980 is juxtaposed with rehearsal recordings from 2006. Both recordings provide fascinating insights into the intentions of the famous conductor.

The Camerata Salzburg begins a collaboration with Channel Classics and, with it's leader Giovanni Guzzo, presents it's first recording entitled Muses. The album includes three neoclassical masterpieces for chamber orchestra by Igor Stravinsky. The Concerto in E-flat "Dumbarton Oaks" is a small concerto in the style of the Brandenburg Concertos. Apollon musag�te pays homage to Apollo, and to the Muses of mime, poetry and dance, with beautiful, harmonically pure and melodically perfect music. The Concerto in D employs every conceivable kind of string sound and technique, creating a combination of pure melodic and rhythmic drive and wonderful cantabile passages. In these three works, Camerata Salzburg delves deeply into sound, a quest made possible by each musician's individual commitment to the ensemble, uniting the muses of chamber music, concert and orchestra.