ITALY • AUSTRIA

The Places

The tour starts at the great Augustinian foundation, Kloster Neustift (Novacella), at Brixen (Bressanone) in Southern Tyrol, with its rococo church interior and collection of late medieval paintings. This is followed by a visit to Innsbruck, the capital of the Tyrol, with its famous Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof) and rococo Wilten Basilica and Collegiate Church.

The Music

The music chosen for this tour of Brixen and Innsbruck is by Mozart and includes two symphonies, with other works. Symphony No. 40 is the second of the group of three final symphonies, written in Vienna in 1787, and Symphony No. 28 was written in Salzburg in 1773 or 1774. Other works included are overtures to the early opera Il rè pastore, to The Abduction from the Seraglio, Mozart’s first operatic success in Vienna, and the overture to La clemenza di Tito, written in 1791, a few months before his death.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 58 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

R E V I E W:

 
I guess these Musical Journeys serve several purposes. A far as Naxos is concerned they recycle sound recordings for those who prefer a visual image to make a change from the wallpaper. The images are often quite stunning, whilst the music, never less than appealing, can be appropriate to the image or otherwise; a fact I touch on in this review. Other functions can be to remind the inveterate tourist of places visited, or of places to go as part of a future itinerary.
 
A word first about the Tyrol. In the days of Mozart, whose music is the backing to these scenes, it was part of the Hapsburg Empire of which the composer was a citizen. Italy was not even a nation, rather a collection of states, some with rulers with a connection with the Hapsburgs whilst others were influenced by, or later under, French control. In that generic sense Italy was a country Mozart visited in his childhood as his father hawked his genius round Europe. I detail this in my survey of The Complete Operas of Mozart. It can be considered, therefore, wholly appropriate that his music is the backing to this collection of views of the Tyrol the southern part of which became ceded to Italy in the treaties of 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War, Italy having joined in on the allies side, albeit a little late in the day.
 
Brixen lies in that ceded part of the Tyrol and contains the magnificent Neustift Monastery - the focus of the first part of this collection (Chs. 1-4). The external beauty includes the ornamental ceilings of the Cloisters, the Romanesque Bell Tower dating from the twelfth century whilst other parts are Gothic (Ch.1). The Molto allegro movement of Mozart’s 40 ^th symphony, one of a group of three composed in Vienna as he sought work, is an appropriate accompaniment. However, it is the magnificent interior of the Neustift Monastery that is the highlight of this Musical Journey where an equally appropriate accompaniment is the Molto allegro of the same symphony. The camera wanders around the magnificently painted and ornamented ceilings. These scenes are quite fantastic and overwhelmingly lovely. If one has never visited them I suspect this will stimulate thoughts of rectifying that state of affairs. Meanwhile the camera and Mozart’s music allow the observer to luxuriate in such beauty (Ch.2). The camera moves on (Ch.3 ) to show a different perspective with late medieval paintings of the life and death of St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Barbara. These include a vivid representation of the Passion of Christ. Thus vivid scenes contrast with the interior as does the Minuetto of the symphony. The final part of the visit takes in the library and its Rococo ornamentation. The fastish Allegro is less appropriate as the camera has to eke out time for the music to finish with some repetitive scenes as the camera runs somewhat out of content.
 
The second part of this Musical Journey focuses on the Austrian town of Innsbruck, capital of the Tyrol. The views of the town and its hilly setting is impressive with the river Inn running through it. It was the Hapsburg seat and was rebuilt by the formidable Empress Maria Theresa in the eighteenth century. She had a less than benign view of Mozart; even so the allegro spiritoso of Wolfgang’s earlier 28 ^th symphony provides an apt background (Ch.5). In the town of Innsbruck the photographs of Helbling House, dated 1560, which is dominated by elaborate and extensive Rococo ornaments added around 1730 were rather too fancy for my taste (Ch.6). The visit to the rooftops of Innsbruck with the copper roof of the church, turned green, is less than interesting whilst the façade of the Golden Dachl originally built by Duke Friedrich in about 1420 as his own residence is more impressive (Ch.7).
 
The remaining views of Innsbruck are less than captivating and stretch time with a visit to the Innsbruck Alpine Zoo (Ch.9) with the music now finding vitality in Mozart’s overture to his early opera seria Il re pastore composed for a visit to Salzburg by the Archduke Maximilian, youngest son of the Empress Maria Theresa. The story of love and duty, with overtones of avuncular behaviour by royalty being considered entirely appropriate for the occasion albeit the family never did Mozart any favours. However the music finds an appropriate venue among some captivating water animals.
 
The concluding visits are to Wilten Collegiate Church (Ch.10) and Wilten Basilica (Ch.11); both stretched by the timings of the overtures to the singspiel The Abduction from the Seraglio and Mozart’s final opera La Clemenza di Tito respectively. By this time I was tiring of churches and their exterior decorations and would have much preferred a closer look at the impressive mountains that surround Innsbruck.
 
The included leaflet is adequately informative whilst Mozart’s music and the playing of the Capella Istropolitana under Barry Wordsworth was a consistent delight.
 
-- Robert J Farr, MusicWeb International
 

Available for the first time in the United States, this set from the Sony Classical Masters Series features Alicia de Larrocha playing the works of Mozart, including the Complete Piano Sonatas, Rondos K 485 and 511 and Fantasias K 397 and 475. The Sony Classical Masters is a new series offering a huge wealth of recordings at a very attractive price. Combining the greatest recordings from the RCA, BMG, and Sony Classical labels in one series for the first time, the series houses the performances of the best-loved repertoire by preeminent artists such as James Galway, John Williams, Julian Bream, Lorin Maazel, Yo Yo Ma, Evgeny Kissin, Isaac Stern, James Levine and Glenn Gould, to name but a few. With 42 single-disc releases and 28 box sets, this is a truly all-encompassing range and a complete classical collection in itself, and includes many titles which have not been available for some time.

The Orpheum Foundation, which has been supporting young musicians for over thirty years, has joined forces with Alpha Classics for a series of recordings devoted to Mozart’s concertos, regardless of instrument. The leading soloists of the young generation have been selected to appear under the artistic direction of Howard Griffiths, a renowned Mozart conductor, who considers that performing his music is like ‘looking in a mirror: you can hear if everything is in place, musicality, intonation, rhythm, phrasing’. These albums will reveal the great virtuosos of tomorrow and immortalize their success in this implacable test. The artists featured on this release include Ziyu He, Theo Plath, Melodie Zhao, and Howard Griffiths.

The Orpheum Foundation, which has been supporting young musicians for over thirty years, has joined forces with Alpha Classics for a series of recordings devoted to Mozart’s concertos, regardless of instrument. The leading soloists of the young generation have been selected to appear under the artistic direction of Howard Griffiths, a renowned Mozart conductor, who considers that performing his music is like ‘looking in a mirror: you can hear if everything is in place, musicality, intonation, rhythm, phrasing’. These albums will reveal the great virtuosos of tomorrow and immortalize their success in this implacable test. The artists featured on this release include Stephen Waarts, Can Cakmur, and Ivo Dudler.

The Mozart symphonies on this album were recorded within two weeks at the European Music Festival Stuttgart in September 2006. More than 20 symphonies, ranging from the earliest to the last ten, were chosen to represent the superb range of the composer's output. The aim was to recreate as far as possible the playing style of the period. Roger Norrington used the exact orchestra size of each symphony at it's first performance (the smallest was a mere 18 players!). Tempos followed the most recent research. Bow strokes, articulation and phrasing were carefully studied, and of course the orchestra played quite without the 20th century vibrato. Every album in this edition contains a symphony from the early, the middle and the late period. The last four symphonies, however, were played in a much grander, and experimental, manner (24 violins and 16 woodwinds).

Returning to his beloved bassoon Peter Whelan takes a fresh look at the two surviving works by Mozart for the instrument: Concerto K. 191 and Sonata K. 292. These attractive early works were most likely composed during the composer’s time in Salzburg. The concerto is the earliest of his woodwind concertos, and has become a staple work for every bassoon player: it showcases the tremendous capabilities of the pre-nineteenth-century instrument, its agility, extraordinary range and tone color. Whelan and his virtuoso Ensemble Marsyas are playing from the original printed parts since the autograph score has not survived. While the sonata’s original medium is uncertain – for two bass instruments or bassoon and keyboard – Whelan makes it his own with Kristian Bezuidenhout performing the continuo line. Ensemble Marsyas rounds off the program with Mozart’s most dramatic work for winds, the Serenade in C minor. Composed in Vienna for the Harmonie (the bassoon’s natural home), it served as a musical laboratory where Mozart could experiment with the virtuoso and lyrical possibilities of his Viennese wind soloists who later animated his greatest operas.

Following her critically acclaimed recording of Mozart Concertos with Sir Roger Norrington and the RSNO, Francesca Dego turns to a selection of his Sonatas with her long-term recital partner Francesca Leonardi. Dego commented ‘Francesca and I have been playing together for seventeen years, more than half my life and the totality of my career. To work as a duo on a regular basis means reaching common interpretative solutions, ones that sum up each player’s qualities, and creates a great sense of mutual responsibility. What you do together somehow feels naturally complete. We decided to build this album around our very favorite Sonata, KV 454 in B flat major, which we had been performing for many years and in which Mozart’s simplicity and flamboyance coexist in perfect harmony.’

REVIEWS:

Harpsichordist and organist Luc Beauséjour is never short of ideas when it comes to offering concert programs marked by refinement and authenticity. Beauséjour offers here a program of three famous sonatas (no. 11, K. 331, "alla Turca"; no. 13, K. 333; and no. 16, K. 545), all of which bear the mark of Mozart's genius. The fortepiano recorded here was made in 2019 by Rodney Regier and is a copy of an instrument by Viennese maker Anton Walter (1752-1826).

“The remarkable attention [Beauséjour] gives to proportions and to a singing quality have made him a one-of-a-kind artist.” -Le Devoir

“The Armida Quartet endeavors to find dissonances lying like sleeping metaphors on the seabed of Mozart’s music, in order to bring them to the surface and back to life – yet without making them too obvious. In so doing, the musicians commit themselves to follow the original sources, which they are intensely studying in collaboration with expert musicological counsel. But they are also committed to their chosen name, “Armida”, which evokes a widespread opera subject stemming from Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (“Jerusalem Delivered”).In that well-known story, Armida stands for what we would call cognitive dissonance. The Christian knight from the West and the pagan beauty from the East are fascinated with one another and fall in love. Despite her infatuation, however, Armida must surely also be an evil sorceress, since she is distracting Rinaldo, the crusader, from his holy mission of war. Armida’s final submission is sealed once and for all with a battle victory and a baptism: this is obviously a Western projection we need to view with a greater deal of nuance. With its apparently irresolvable dissonance arising from contradictory feelings, the fear caused by the seductive outer appearance of beauty, and the ostensibly unappealable validity of cultural norms, the fictional Armida material is a true aesthetic and cultural litmus test... (Excerpt from the booklet notes by Hansjörg Ewert)

“Playing with other instruments is always fascinating: it’s not only great fun, but also an important experience for me as a pianist, every time. The piano is actually just a mechanical toolbox that we can operate without having to use our breath. Thanks to its mechanism, the sound is immediately produced; once the hammers have struck, it can no longer be influenced, and the note unavoidably fades away. It is thus essential for a pianist to imagine what it is like to play another instrument, and to study the sound of other instruments in depth. They can be wind or string instruments, or the human voice. Sometimes I imagine I am playing with a string quartet; at other times it can be a full orchestra. With a woodwind quintet as musical partner, I cannot help but breathe with the music: my colleagues are constantly putting that ability on display. It starts with the very first attack. If I just “played piano” as usual, we would never be together on the beat; thanks to the piano’s immediate mechanism, my note would always be there a little earlier. But if I imagine the gentle attack of a bassoon or a clarinet while listening closely, I can make an attempt not to be overly “on time” when I strike the key. I can also execute certain chords as a quick arpeggio, with the notes not quite together. Of course, such a mental image of breathing while playing can also be of great help when I am giving solo recitals: imagining wind attacks, or the upbow and downbow on the violin. The piano is an instrument designed to create illusion: the toolchest produces the most wonderful things, but to achieve them, we, as players, are required to use our imagination.....“ (from the artists)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s six ‘Milanese’ quartets constitute a milestone in his artistic activity. Written between Bolzano and Milan between 1772 and 1773, they came a few years after the Quartet K80/73f that he had composed in Lodi during his first Italian visit. More than that work, these six pieces – conceived before Mozart left the Milanese public with his third and last work for the Lombard capital, Lucio Silla K135 – constitute one of the first organic sets of string quartets ever conceived. Though based on the model of Haydn, they reveal Mozart’s modern spirit, capable of following a new path and enriching it with his own personal contribution. Thirty years after the first and only recording of these works on period instruments by the Festetics Quartet, here is the recording debut of a young Italian ensemble, with the bonus of the first ever historically informed recording of the Quartet K156’s original second movement.

The freshness of works of a young master: this is what we discover on the new GENUIN album presented by the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen under the direction of Johannes Klumpp. In Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Divertimenti K. 136-138, we hear a young composer in the process of growing up. The top-class, versatile orchestra performs these sparkling treasures lovingly and with spirit, full of dynamism and effervescent humor. Energetic concerts, curious programs and musical excellence have been the hallmarks of the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra in Essen for 64 years. In its concerts, the international, young ensemble under the direction of chief conductor Johannes Klumpp explores new limits and experiments with concert forms, genres and styles: other art forms are regularly combined to music in the concerts.

A spirit of departure - the often-used catchword stands here not only in a figurative sense, but also for three different life situations of the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in which he left his not necessarily beloved hometown of Salzburg and set out for new shores elsewhere. In 1772, when he was only 16 years old, he traveled to Milan to conduct the rehearsals for the premiere of his new opera - Lucio Silla achieved a new quality of character drawing and set the trend for Mozart's further operatic work. A few years later he revolutionized the genre of the piano concerto with the "Jenamy" concerto, the last one composed in Salzburg. Shortly thereafter, Mozart set out on another great journey. The innovations in the interplay between soloist and orchestra laid the foundation for his later successes with the Viennese piano concertos. Finally, the Symphony K. 338 was composed shortly before Mozart left Salzburg forever; musically, it too lays the foundations for the successful Viennese years that followed.

These performances are of a surpassing musicality throughout.

Although Mozart's five violin concertos represent only a very small part of his creative work (when compared to the 27 piano concertos and the 41 symphonies), they nevertheless belong to the core repertoire of all violinists. Just like his piano concertos Mozart’s violin concertos, all of them written in his young years, rest on the constant dialogue of the solo instrument with the orchestra. Right from the first concerto the violin is integrated into the performance of the orchestra, which in itself is much more than just accompaniment. Gil Shaham, one of the foremost violinist of our times, carves these works to jewels of the genre. He is accompanied by the SWR Symphony Orchestra under Nicholas McGegan, who stands for historically informed music performance.

REVIEW:

This cycle of Mozart violin concertos has no right to be as good as it is. The players are of diverse backgrounds and aren’t known for working together. So it’s a surprise to find that these performances are of a surpassing musicality throughout. Shaham’s slow movements are gloriously melodic, and listeners get to hear the rarely heard replacement Adagio in E major, K. 261, a superb piece of Mozartian lyricism. Coordination between soloist and orchestra is at a very high level. This relatively unheralded release may come to be seen as a standard for Mozart’s violin concertos.

-- AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

The first three volumes of Anne-Marie McDermott's Mozart piano concerto cycle with Denmark's Odense Symfoniorkester have received ecstatic notices from the international musical press. Volume 4, again conducted by German maestro Sebastian Lang-Lessing, presents two of Mozart's very greatest concertos -  the grand C major, K. 503, and the brooding D minor, K. 466.