Includes work(s) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

During a scant ten weeks in the summer of 1788, Mozart wrote three outstanding symphonies, highly innovative in their complexity and length. He was thirty-two and living in Vienna, a city which had offered him numerous opportunities in the past. Musically, it had provided a platform combining excellent musicians and enthusiastic audiences. In more personal terms, it was the place where he had freed himself from the emotional pressure exerted by his father Leopold and his former employer, the Archbishop of Salzburg. However, Viennese audiences were no longer interested in his masterful modernist compositions. When Mozart composed these, his last three symphonies, he was thought of as a ‘dissonance hunter.’ In this symphonic ‘trilogy,’ Mozart illuminates all aspects of human expression, quite independently of his personal situation. Each work presents a different character. No. 39 in E flat major contains numerous elements reminiscent of chamber music, while no. 40 in G minor makes clear references to opera. No. 41 in C major includes formal elements from Baroque music (overture, concerto, fugue). Its synthesis of sonata form and fugue was, and still is, a tour de force that could only have been written by Mozart.

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REVIEW:

These are exciting, distinctive readings that don't make the music into something that it is not. Tempos, while decidedly brisk, do not seem rushed, even in the slow movements. The sense of excitement thus produced feels real, not artificially forced upon the music. The readings are full of ideas that seem inevitable.

– Fanfare

The String Quartet offers countless possibilities of interplay between the different instruments. If you add a fifth person to the mix, in this case the viola player, Nobuko Imai, with the Auryn Quartet, then it not only gives the whole sound a comparatively orchestral quality but also considerably increases the methods at the composer's disposal. These are just two reasons why Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's combination of 2 violins, 2 violas and a cello have become so well-loved. The opulent and tragic KV 406 in C minor together with the pure, idealistic KV 515 in C major forms the first standalone album, the famous, sorrowful KV 516 in G minor with the early, exuberant and dramatic KV 174 the second album and the chirruping, mischievous KV 614 in E flat major with the mature and worldly-wise KV 593 in D major the third. In as far as these characterisations say anything at all about the music, it is only about the opening of each piece. Each movement is distinct and different. Every quintet tells its own great story.

MOZART Piano Concertos: No. 20 in d, K 466; No. 15 in B?, K 450 • Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (pn); Antoine de Bavier, cond; Stuttgart RSO • ICA 5103 (54:24) Live: Ludwigsburg 7/11/1956


Michelangeli’s Mozart is often criticized for having the same flaws as many of his other recordings: His playing is controlled, perhaps for some over-controlled to the point of being static in conception; his tempos are extreme, slower than normal in the middle movements, faster than most in the outer ones; he is free with rhythms in certain places, perhaps more so in the cadenzas than elsewhere (I have little problem with this detail in these areas in particular). Some would call him cold, a surface performer who glosses over the true spirit of this music. But it is difficult to judge harshly a performer who is so very polished in his interpretation. Even if Michelangeli were not only in his mid-30s at the time of these readings, one would be hard-pressed to call these performances cold. Perhaps even more importantly, these readings took place in the 1950s, when every composer was still seen through 19th-century eyes in some way or another; the “informed” practice of the second half of the century was soon to begin—the research into original instrumentation, dynamics, articulation, etc.


When listening to Michelangeli’s Mozart as performed at Ludwigsburg, one is struck more by the forward-propelled, one might even say Beethovenian, momentum of his playing. In the D-Minor Concerto, it is the latter composer’s oft-played cadenzas, which Michelangeli has also chosen to perform. In his hands the entire work seems momentous, from the very first low orchestral grumblings of the opening movement, through the lyrical at times, stormy at others, Romanze , to the virtuosic and flighty finale. Michelangeli performs as expected: His tone is always beautiful and rounded, his scales and arpeggios are crystal clear, his control of dynamic shading and nuances is awe-inspiring; but even more importantly his energy is palpable as is his sense of danger. One sits on the edge of one’s seat when listening to this Mozart. The B?-Major Concerto, K 450, was one of the pianist’s favorites. This reading is filled with some of the best of the qualities of the D Minor, though here some of those negative complaints heaped upon the performer seem more justified: The tempo in the opening movement is too fast. There are moments which just sound rushed; the rhythmic quirks are evident from the very opening—initiated by the orchestra, these are later echoed by the soloist. Yet for all the flaws, there are moments which are just magical: the gorgeous opening trills of the cadenza, and even more so the dance-like lift the pianist gives to the second subject just a few moments later; the simple yet sincere way the forces play the second movement, especially the wonderful sense of dialogue they maintain throughout. And if one requires technical perfection for any of Mozart’s finales, it would certainly be this one—one of the most difficult of his concertos. Michelangeli is not one to disappoint.


If one requires Mozart to sound the way a Brendel, a Schiff, or a Perahia would perform these works, then one should look towards those other performers; but if one is open to a variety of approaches, then this Michelangeli will supplement one’s collection nicely—to me the very best Mozart that the pianist ever committed to disc (forget the old EMI or DG recordings)! Though the sound is still somewhat primitive and the orchestra a bit stiff in certain places, these are, regardless, performances to cherish.


FANFARE: Scott Noriega

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

GERMANY



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

The Places � The tour begins in the Salzkammergut, most of which lies nowadays in Upper Austria. It includes Hellbrunn Palace and the Residenz in Salzburg and the Styrian city of Graz. The Music � The music for our journey is taken from Mozart's Haffner Serenade, written in honour of a friend in Mozart's native city of Salzburg.

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

AUSTRIA

The Places
The tour starts in Salzburg, with glimpses of the Austrian countryside, often in winter snow. It ends in the district of Salzburg, where it began.

The Music
The music is taken from three serenades by Mozart. The most famous, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, written in 1787 in Vienna, is followed by two serenades written ten years earlier for social occasions in Salzburg.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo 2.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 68 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

Mozart: Adagio

This recording of Mozart chamber music can be listened to as a pleasant private concert "en famille". The choice of the works is dictated solely by the specific instruments played by the three family members: violin, viola and keyboard. This is not a usual instrumentation in the chamber music repertoire, yet it is this combination that has given rise to a pleasantly varied program - thanks to Mozart's inexhaustible genius! This cleverly thought out program features four pieces with different instrumentations and moods in order to elicit a constant interest and pleasure from the listener. The Kuijkens Trio plays with their unmistakable understanding, tenderness, and tone color; a constant delight throughout the album.

Boredom (in German: “long whiling”) is apparently what drove Wolfgang to compose one of his string quartets at the inn at Bolzano. And yes, he was doing well, as father Leopold assured Mozart’s mother in a letter dated 28 October 1772. How can we even imagine what boredom must have felt like for a 16-year-old genius? At any rate, it would be too Romantic to imagine that Mozart was writing an emotional diary with these string quartets, a sort of journal intime of his Italian journey. Still, by observing his son’s state of “boredom,” Leopold was indeed noting that Wolfgang was involved in a personal moment of forced leisure. Sitting at the table in the inn, he was processing and digesting the myriad cultural, social, and musical impressions he had gathered in his travels, creating music that he could soon try out with friends or colleagues, or that might be performed at an upcoming reception in high society.

The first authentic quartet and the first group of six were all written in Italy; the second set emerged in the context of a trip to Vienna; finally, the late, “Prussian” quartets are associated the last journey in Mozart’s life. In the midst of these, the six “Classical” quartets show the manner in which Mozart chose to position himself in Vienna – also in relation to Joseph Haydn, who, in Vienna and elsewhere, was regarded as the undisputed master of the string quartet genre.

Mozart’s piano concertos form a set that is not just exceptional but absolutely unique in the history of music: from No. 9 to No. 27, all are definitive masterpieces. According to H.C. Robbins Landon, an eminent specialist in the composer’s life and work, ‘It is above all their immense stylistic diversity that places Mozart’s piano concertos above and beyond those of his contemporaries’. What these scores also share is their position at a crossroads for strongly impacting influences: that of the symphony, encouraging Mozart to make lavish use of the orchestra; the wind bands of the Imperial court, shaping his enhanced role for the woodwinds; and the influence of the opera, whose styles he worked into these concertos, often treating the dialogue between piano and orchestra as if they were stage characters. In this new recording, Eric Le Sage is joined by the Gävle Symfoniorkester to perform the 17th and 24th concertos for piano and orchestra by the Salzburg composer.

REVIEWS:

For his first recording of Mozart concertos, Éric Le Sage, in the company of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra and oboist/conductor François Leleux, programmes two strikingly different concertos, pairing the (mainly) bucolic G major (K453) of 1784 with the C minor (K491) of two years later.

You can tell much about an interpretation from the opening bars of K491. There’s a polish to the legato strings, the wind answering in kind, and Le Sage’s entry is sensitive and beautifully shaped...I very much like Le Sage’s unorthodox choice of Fauré’s cadenza for the first movement, which dutifully bases itself on Mozart’s themes but can’t resist clothing them in entirely Fauréan harmonies.

-- Gramophone

There is no shortage whatsoever of recordings of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453, and Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, two of the most popular works in the entire piano concerto repertory. However, many fall into two large categories: traditional readings with a large symphony orchestra, and historical performance versions. This one by pianist Eric Le Sage and the Gävle Symfoniorkester defies easy categorization, however, and that's all to the good.

The Gävle orchestra, using traditional instruments, is small (52 players at full strength, perhaps fewer here), and it is wonderfully recorded by the Alpha label in its home hall in Sweden. Its work under guest conductor François Leleux is lively, and the interaction between orchestra and soloist is of the sort that one usually hears when an orchestra is conducted from the keyboard.

The most striking feature is Le Sage's playing, which is incredibly detailed, yet seems to have an unending spontaneity. Sample the finales, where Le Sage seems attuned to every detail of Mozart's overflowing invention, and where the orchestra weaves in and out in what feel like unpredictable ways even for those who have heard these concertos a hundred times. Le Sage uses a good deal of pedal, but these aren't really "Romantic" readings; nor are they influenced much by historical-instrument versions despite the modest dimensions. Perhaps this is French Mozart, despite the Swedish orchestra; in the C minor concerto, Le Sage uses a rarely heard cadenza by Fauré, written for Marguerite Hasselhoff in 1902. Whatever the case, it is an exceptionally careful and satisfying Mozart piano concerto recording.

-- AllMusic

This economically priced box set of six CDs brings together all the previous releases of Mozart works performed by Jos van Immerseel. This impressive body of work perfectly encapsulates van Immerseel’s intimate relationship with Mozart’s music and shows his interpretations to be as inspired as they historically informed.

Scriabin and Mozart: two composers rarely associated, yet the juxtaposition here seems clear when performed by Zlata Chochieva. In this first album, the Russian pianist, new to the naïve label, is ingenious in both the cycles of fragmented variations and the more opulent sonatas or preludes. This project is inspired by the 150th anniversary of Scriabin’s birth, but Zlata Chochieva has been a fan of the Russian composer since her childhood as he was the first to appeal to her emotions as a listener and performer. Associating him with the classical Mozart – rather than a romantic composer, as is usually the case – enables Zlata Chochieva to conjure up an unexpected kinship that benefits from her vibrant and graceful style, rising to thrilling virtuosity. “The perfection in the phrasing, the polyphony and the formal proportions, plus the concision and the lack of superfluous notes are just some of the points that link Scriabin to Mozart,” she explains.