With these concerts, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig embarks on a musical journey to the Czech Republic in memory of its former conductor Václav Neumann. It was there that Jan Václav Voríšek was born in 1791, the year of Mozart's death, and was taken away from it by pulmonary tuberculosis at the same age as Mozart, only 34 years old. The manuscript of his D Major Symphony shares the fate of the symphonies of his friend and companion Franz Schubert and was neither printed nor performed during his lifetime. In the meantime, however, it has become his most frequently performed work! A short, late and rare happy chapter of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's moving biography is set in the capital of the Czech Republic. When he arrived in Prague in January 1787, he was quite astonished: That his music met with such great enthusiasm was by no means a matter of course for Mozart. Looking back, he will describe his successes in Prague as the most beautiful moments of his life. The D Major Symphony K. 504 was premiered in Prague and opens the group of Mozart's last four symphonies.

The original idea for this fifth clarinet competition was that it would be part of the “Van Eyck project 2020 – 2021”. Everyone knows why this has been delayed by a year. For this competition, three composers were asked to write a new work inspired by the characteristic painting by Jan Van Eyck, “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb”. The composers Alain Crepin (Lam Gods Impressions), Johan Duijck (L’Homme désarmé) and Dirk Brossé (The Secret of the Mystic Lamb) have succeeded in this in a very special way. The International Clarinet Competition Ghent has now been organized for the fifth time. It has now grown into a special and highly appreciated competition that, due to its great and quickly built up success, has attracted registrations from more than 200 candidates from 5 continents. Of these, 65 clarinetists were selected to participate. On this album you can listen to the three finalists and enjoy their exceptional playing. Accompanied by the Flanders Symphony Orchestra, the Zemlinsky Quartet, Johan Duijck (piano) and soprano Franches Dhont, they will take you into the atmosphere of the competition!

The combination of Herbert von Karajan and the revered Romanian pianist Clara Haskil (1895-1960) was an ideal partnership. Karajan had an extraordinary rapport with her, describing her career as ‘a long and often sorrowful march to glory’ due to Haskil’s well documented ill-health. Since she and Karajan were contracted to different companies, they never recorded together which makes this live Salzburg performance to mark Mozart’s bicentenary in 1956 especially valuable. Haskil, notoriously self-critical wrote: “The concert tour with Karajan was unique and unforgettable.” Karajan’s reading of Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 is characteristically fleet-footed with great tension, a rare example of a live recording featuring the Philharmonia Orchestra and the conductor in concert together.

A New Yorker review about Rudolf Serkin from 2017 states: “his performances… reflect his sense of titanic struggle to realize the ideas and emotions that he found in the words that he played. He bypassed the surface sheen of ingratiating sounds to render the beauty of that struggle; his piano tone is itself the sound of struggle filled with the meeting of metal and wood and evoking spiritual exaltation through physical and intellectual exertion.”

Rudolf Serkin was born in 1903 in Bohemia. His musical gifts emerged early, and he made his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic at 12. His European career extended throughout the 20s and 30s. He first played in the United States in 1933, and three years later appeared with the New York Philharmonic under Toscanini, eventually performing with them over 100 times. Rudolf Serkin became one of the most admired pianists of the 20th century. He performed and recorded extensively with the top international orchestras and conductors. This release contains first releases of live performances of Four Mozart’s piano concertos.

Tchaikovsky declared that Mozart was ‘full of divine beauty’, and Schubert’s wonder at the ‘countless images of a brighter and better world’ that Mozart was able to conjure up through his music knew no bounds. Many of us carry the image of Mozart as a transcendent genius, but what do we really know about his life and career, and indeed his music? This entertaining and informative biography, written by music historian Davinia Caddy and narrated by actor Leighton Pugh, takes us from Mozart’s beginnings as a child prodigy to his greatest successes and cruelest setbacks. The narrative is illustrated with music from each stage of Mozart’s intense career, including the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, Clarinet Concerto, Coronation Mass, Requiem, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro and many more.

With performances by:

Pier Giorgio Morandi | Kölner Kammerorchester | Petersen Quartet | Werner Hollweg | Celina Lindsley | Capella Istropolitana | Walton Grönroos | Michael Halász | Concentus Hungaricus | Concerto Köln | Anna di Mauro | Helmut Müller-Brühl | John Dickie | Gabriele Schreckenbach | Andrea Martin | Hungarian Radio Chorus | Péter Köves | Janusz Monarcha | Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia | Priti Coles | Mátyás Antál | Budapest Failoni Chamber Orchestra | Patrizia Pace | Herbert Lippert | Slovak Philharmonic Chorus | Camerata Cassovia

Praised by Gramophone as ‘one of the more original thinkers of his generation’, the Italian pianist Federico Colli is internationally recognized for his highly imaginative and philosophical interpretations and impeccable technique. This album is the first instalment of a new, intensely personal project for the pianist: an exploration of selected piano works by Mozart. It was the discovery (at the age of around six) of Mozart’s music that caught the imagination of the young Federico and inspired him to study music, and it was winning the International Piano Competition Mozart, in Salzburg, that launched his career as a pianist. His approach has been to immerse himself completely in Mozart’s own experience at the composition of each piece: where was Mozart living, what was he doing, what were his motivations behind each composition? Only after in-depth study of biographies of Mozart, his (and others’) letters, the historical, social, and political background, the Zeitgeist, the cultural atmosphere surrounding each work, does Colli then approach the scores and start the process of building his interpretations.

Acclaim:

“The opening sound we hear on Federico Colli’s album tells us that this idiosyncratic pianist’s first installment in a Mozart series is going to be particularly adventurous… The willing listener just needs to follow where Colli goes.” --Times of London

Described by BBC Music Magazine as ‘Mozart music-making of altogether superior quality’, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s acclaimed Mozart Concertos series reaches Vol. 6. Along with Concerto No. 24, K. 491, the two concertos presented here were composed in Vienna in the winter of 1785 – 86, at a time when Mozart was working on Le nozze di Figaro. He was at the height of his fame as composer, virtuoso pianist, and teacher. These three concertos were all written for his own use in the concerts of that winter, and remained unpublished during his lifetime. Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario) was commissioned by Emperor Joseph II for an important state visit and performed at Schönbrunn palace on 7 February 1786. The Overture highlights Mozart’s innate ability as an orchestrator, and serves as a demonstration piece for Gábor Takács-Nagy and the wonderful musicians of Manchester Camerata.

REVIEWS:

Gábor Takács-Nagy elicits incisive yet vocally orientated phrasing from The Manchester Camerata, giving the impression that the marvellous string, wind and brass sections are reacting and responding to one another, while the timpani strokes make consistently palpable yet never overwhelming impact. The point and refinement of Bavouzet’s elegant phrasing exemplifies Mozart’s famous description of how certain passages should ‘flow like oil’… The engineering’s spacious yet clear concert-hall realism further factors into my enthusiastic recommendation.

-- Gramophone (Jed Distler)

Leif Ove Andsnes releases a second Mozart Momentum album with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, presenting a portrait of the master composer during the years in which his writing for the piano was at its most revolutionary, creative and game-changing.

“As masterly and finished and perfect as the music itself” – The Telegraph
(on Mozart Momentum 1785)

Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra follow their “triumphant” (Gramophone), “sparkling” (New York Times) and award-winning Mozart Momentum 1785 release with its partner album, focusing on the composer’s extraordinary creativity in the year 1786. “When you realize how quickly Mozart developed during the early years of the 1780s, it makes you ask: why did this happen? What was going on? It’s about the momentum of his creativity at this time,” says Leif Ove Andsnes.

In 1786 the white-hot inspiration of Mozart’s work on his opera The Marriage of Figaro spilled over into the composer’s piano concertos and chamber music. Suddenly, Mozart’s music was filled with a new spirit of conversation, deeper layers of meaning, and fuller explorations of instrumental and human character. In these works, Mozart was looking far beyond the confines of public taste and writing, apparently, to satisfy himself.

The double-album Mozart Momentum 1786 includes Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 23 & 24, Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Piano Trio in B-flat major and Recitative and Aria Ch’io mi scordi di te? featuring guest soprano Christiane Karg.

The two Mozart piano concertos are game-changers in the history of the form. They fed off the new creative energies the composer was experiencing in Vienna in 1786, as he rode an unprecedented wave of popular success and musical evolution. These scores are often held up as the most exquisite that Mozart ever wrote. “There was new creative energy in the air,” says Andsnes: “Mozart seems to have gone deeper and deeper into the idiom and its possibilities and tried new techniques. I don’t know any music that offers such emotional diversity.”

For this recording, Andsnes has been reunited with his colleagues in the Mahler Chamber Orchestra – a team “you’d be hard-put to find … better matched,” raved The Guardian. “There is an attitude in the Mahler Chamber Orchestra,” says Andsnes, “that you are not just there to play well, you’re there to find a truth in the music. It’s something that is very special and that I have never experienced in quite the same way with another orchestra.”

The Mozart Momentum project draws no distinction between forms of music – whether orchestral, chamber or even vocal – but all the pieces are united by the presence of the piano. “The idea,” says Andsnes, “was to explore the diversity of what was going on in Mozart’s creative life at the time – to show that a separation between solo playing, chamber music playing and concerto playing isn’t really relevant.”

Mozart Momentum 1785 was named one of “The Best Classical Albums of 2021” by Gramophone and Andsnes’s performance of Piano Concerto No. 22 was chosen as one of “The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2021” by The New York Times. The release was also named “Album of the Week” by The Sunday Times and BBC Radio 3, and awarded a Diapason d’Or de l’année by France’s leading classical music magazine and Radio France.

Includes:                 
Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat major, K. 493       
Rondo in D Major, K.485

"Ch'io mi scordi di te? ... Non temer, amato bene," K. 505 (ft. Christiane Karg)  Piano Trio in B flat major, K502            
Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491     

Praise for Mozart Momentum - 1785 / Andsnes, Mahler Chamber Orchestra:

Socially distanced they may have been but the camaraderie that was so evident in their groundbreaking Beethoven cycle with Leif Ove Andsnes is, if anything, even more apparent here.

-- Gramophone (Recording of the Month, June 2021; Critic's Choice)

With so many alternatives out there (among classics, Mitsuko Uchida, Murray Perahia, András Schiff), why this? The balance between pianists and ensemble is ideal, clear, vital. And the choice of cadenzas, especially the one by Dinu Lipatti, will make your ears stand up.

-- The Guardian

SOMM Recordings’ acclaimed survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas by Peter Donohoe nears its end with Volume 5 featuring three works from very different periods of the composer’s life. The earliest Sonata, No.3 in B-flat major, K281, from 1775, shows the 18-year-old composer in effervescent mood, nimbly drawing on French and Italian influences, with a cadenza composed by Donohoe for its Rondo finale. From January, 1788, the latest Sonata, No.15 in F major, K533/494, is an ingenious exercise in compromised creativity. Finding himself short of time, Mozart revised an earlier Rondo for the finale to two chromatically rich original movements caught between the Salzburg Serenades he was keen to leave behind and the aria-like coloratura he hoped would appeal to audiences. A decade earlier, the Sonata No.13 in B-flat major was composed in Paris as Mozart reeled from the death of his mother and the failure of his bid for success in the French capital. His only consolation had been an encounter with Johann Christian Bach, from whom Christopher Morley says in his authoritative booklet notes, he “learned balance and dialogue (the characteristic answering to an assertive masculine opening statement by a yielding, delicate feminine response...) and these qualities inform K333”.

The focus of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto for Così fan tutte is on female infidelity, two partner-swapping couples and a wager. Its enigmatic ambiguity and lightness of touch, its razor’s edge balance between irony and empathy, detachment and involvement, and on-stage reality and illusion is structured with perfect Classical symmetry. More than any other opera it explores the depths and darker impulses of the experience of love. This production by director Sven-Eric Bechtolf was given in Florence with a staging that ‘holds a balance between philosophy and humour’ (bachtrack.com).

Idomeneo is considered as the first of the seven uncontested masterworks of Mozart’s dramatic oeuvre and it is perhaps even the most revolutionary and forward-looking of his work. In “Kasper Holten’s coherent production” (Die Presse) Bernard Richter was “a cultivated bright tenor with beautiful expressive moments” (Kronen Zeitung). “Valentina Nafornit¸a performed the role of Ilia with passion and reached every height with ease and Irina Lungu portrayed Elettra as a great tragic figure and unfolded her soprano with verve in the final aria” (Kurier). Conductor Tomáš Netopil provided with the orchestra “gripping moments from the virtuoso overture onwards” (Kronen Zeitung)

At the age of 22, Mozart was bemoaning lost love and decided to ‘apply myself conscientiously to the clavier duets’, He finished the full set of six Sonatas for Piano – with Violin – in the summer of 1778 and dedicated to the Countess Elizabeth Auguste, Electress of Palatine and Bavaria. They have become known as the ‘Palatine Sonatas’ and are the earliest (relatively) mature works in this instrumental combination, his first essays in the form being at the age of ten. As piano sonatas with violin (as opposed to the Violin Sonatas of later musical eras) these pieces have exquisite balance and are in fact wonderful in every sense; a pure joy. They are dazzlingly colorful, full of drama and emotion. The artists were particularly keen to present these works in an authentic ambience, as in an 18th century salon, and the result is a beautiful balance and intimacy. Peter Sheppard Skærved is a world renowned violinist, author, musicologist, artist and researcher. Over 400 works have been written for him, he has created major exhibits and events at major museums around the world and his recorded legacy is already immense with over 27 albums to date for Divine Art group and numerous for Toccata, Naxos, NMC and more. Daniel-Ben Pienaar also has a fine international reputation. He is primarily interested in early music, Bach, Viennese school and early Romantics. He also has an extensive discography, for Victor Japan, Avie and Linn. This is his first recording for Divine Art. Daniel-Ben is a faculty member at the Royal Academy of Music and runs a wide range of specialist classes. ‘One of the most exciting pianists of his generation’ — Rondo Magazin (Germany)

Brilliant Classics proudly present 5 new albums in this series: QUINTESSENCE, attractively priced compact box sets containing essential core classical repertoire in outstanding performances. Aimed at attracting both the discerning classical connoisseur and the classical newcomer it presents the pillars of classical music: Brahm’s Complete Symphonies & Concertos, Beethoven’s Complete Piano Trios, Mozart’s Music for Violin, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, Orchestral Suites & Violin Concertos and Schubert’s Piano Trios, String Quintets and String Quartets. World class performers include Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra with Jaap van Zweden, Hungarian Chamber Orchestra with Kristóf Baráti and conductor Heinz Bongartz as well as the Berliner Sinfonie-Ochester with Günter Herbig.

Swiss violinist Sebastian Bohren, who’s star is rapidly in the ascendant, makes his AVIE label debut with two concertos from Mozart’s “year of the violin” – Nos. 3 and 5 – paired with the composer’s youthful Symphony No. 29. Sebastian’s interpretations bring out the sparkling energy of the concertos, written when Mozart was just 19 years old, yet at the same time a brandish a smoothly burnished sense of style. His partners on the album, famed Hungarian violinist-turned conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy and Sebastian’s compatriots the CHAARTS Chamber Artists – comprised of leading European soloists and chamber musicians – perfectly embody these contrasting characteristics, both in their accompaniments and their reading of the Symphony which was written within a year of the concerti. Sebastian is equally at home as a soloist and chamber musician. He has performed with the Lucerne Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Basel Symphony Orchestras, among others, under such conductors as James Gaffigan, Andrew Litton and Ivor Bolton. His chamber music collaborators have included Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Thomas Demenga and Konstantin Lifschitz. He plays the “Ex-Wanamaker-Hart” violin made by Guadagnini in Parma in 1761.

REVIEW:

The concerto performances reveal classically balanced interpretations, with Sebastian Bohren's slender, delicate violin playing sounding entirely committed to heavenly, springy elegant tone.

– Online Merker (Ingobert Waltenberger)

After having recorded Mozart’s last three violin concertos in 2014, Arabella Steinbacher, the Festival Strings Lucerne and its leader Daniel Dodds now complete the cycle by presenting Mozart’s less well-known, but equally enchanting Violin Concertos 1 & 2, together with his Adagio in E Major and Rondos in C Major and B-flat Major. Steinbacher plays the cadenzas by Wolfgang Schneiderhan, who co-founded the Festival Strings Lucerne in 1956. Another exciting aspect of this album is that she plays for the first time on the “Ex Benno Walter“ Strad from 1718. Arabella Steinbacher, a multiple award-winner with an extensive PENTATONE discography, is accompanied by the esteemed players of the Festival Strings Lucerne and their leader and artistic director Daniel Dodds.