This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Naïve is particularly proud to release the first recording from the orchestra recently founded by conductor Mathieu Herzog: Ensemble Appassionato. A favorite composer for the orchestra, who other than Mozart to bear witness to the recording debut from this ensemble? An ensemble born under the most auspicious circumstances, full of members from France’s major string quartets. The last three symphonies, a triptych as monumental as it is mysterious - we know almost nothing about the circumstances surrounding their composition - are probably the works that best symbolize the projects thus far of Mathieu Herzog and the Ensemble Appassionato. Their fresh vision, modern and chamber-like, plus a multitude of eclectic repertoire. A vision galvanized by the desire to share music with everyone. Listening to this recording nourished with as much passion and ambition as respect and humility, a more human and personified Mozart appears before us, more luminous than ever. Clear timbres, instrumental cohesion, balance, well-rounded characters, full-bodied tempi ... Mathieu Herzog demonstrates here a vision and an inherent know-how, placing him immediately in the pantheon of great conductors.

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REVIEW:

At root, these are modern-instrument performances that digest the historical discoveries of our time and offer a full-bodied chamber presentation. These three performances are, in their own ways, individual, minutely considered and thus, perhaps inevitably, not to every taste. The ensemble sound, however, is one of the glories of this set. As chamber players and therefore soloists in their own rights, the contribution of each player is palpable.

– Gramophone

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

When it comes to Mozartian perfection on the opera stage, one needn't always seek it in Milan, Vienna, Salzburg or New York! At the Sferisterio Opera Festival in the central Italian city of Macerata, a rapt audience was treated to a production of Don Giovanni "that will enter the annals of opera" (ForumOpera. Com). This magnificent reading of Mozart's timeless masterpiece sweeps the viewer into a libertine, 18th- century society dominated by sensuality and erotic impulses. They are acted out on the stage's main prop, a large, unmade bed, not only by Don Giovanni, but also by just about everyone else in the "nearly faultless cast" (ForumOpera. Com). In his role debut as the title hero, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo is "incandescent" (Gazzetta die Parma) and "doesn't do Don Giovanni; he is the Don. Unsurpassable"(24 Ore).

Classical Music

Performing the music of Mozart is like trying to tell a story everyone knows and has heard many times as if it were the very first time it has been told. It is a combination of musical pleasure and a wealth of variation in it's execution. The Concerto for violin nr. 3 in G major was composed in Salzburg in 1775, when Mozart was 19 years of age. We know from his letters that Mozart dreaded the first performance of the work by Concert Master Antonio Brunetti, who, according to Mozart was a blunt, reeking, mediocre violinist. He was however, greatly relieved when Frans Xaver Kolb performed the premiere instead. Kolb was a considerably more accomplished (and probably less offensive-smelling) violinist. The G major Concerto has always been a personal favorite of mine, and together with Rebaroque, I consider it a privilege to make it "ours," To tell, with our own eyes, ears and Jonas Dominique's fantastic wind arrangements, such a beautiful and moving story as this.

Best-selling American violinist Rachel Barton Pine, whose previous release went straight to #1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart, debuts on AVIE with a survey of Mozart’s complete Violin Concertos and the Sinfonia Concertante, in which she introduces the extraordinarily talented young violist Matthew Lipman. Her orchestra is none other than the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by their legendary founder, Sir Neville Marriner.

Aida Stuckie was a Swiss violinist and teacher whose career began when she won the Geneva Competition in 1940. After this initial success she toured Europe and performed under the most famous conductors including Pina Pozzi, Walter Frey, Christoph Lieske, and Elly Ney. Dedicated to education, she began teaching in 1948, and continued throughout the rest of her life, taking a position at Zurcher Hochschule der Kunste in 1992, where she remained until her retirement. Anne-Sophie Mutter is her most famous student. She wrote of her teacher: "Aïda Stucki's recognition as an artist is both inevitable and overdue. Her artistry is a timeless inspiration. Her interpretation incorporates bewitching sound, personal instinct coupled with great insight to the wishes of the composer. I admire this great violinist deeply. These recordings are a must for any string player and music lover." (Anne-Sophie Mutter) This album won the German Record Critics' Award, 2010.

Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492

Classical Music

The exhilaration and sense of discovery is utterly infectious.” — International Record Review

“These are performances of enormous drama, delicacy, and zest played with keen attention to expressive and textural nuances.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer

This all-Mozart recording leads with the composer’s darkest Symphony, No. 40 in G minor. American soprano Amanda Forsythe joins the group in a dramatic recitative and virtuoso aria from Lucio Silla, and the disc includes the Ballet Music from Idomeneo, a festive and rarely-heard suite from the last great work in the opera seria tradition. Rounding out the set are four lively and entertaining Contradances.

South African-born, London resident Daniel-Ben Pienaar is a completest. Recent surveys, both on the concert platform and in the recording studio, include Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Chopin's Complete Waltzes, Schubert's Complete Sonatas, and the complete keyboard works by Orlando Gibbons. He arrives on the Avie label with another major project in tow: the complete Piano Sonatas by Mozart.

An active recitalist, chamber musician and professor at the Royal Academy of Music, Pienaar has a number of critically acclaimed independent releases under his belt, but this recording represents and uncommon synergy between artist, repertoire and production values. In Gramophone Award-winning producer Jonathan Freeman-Atwood, Pienaar found a special simpatico which he found "profoundly enabling", resulting in a creative recording process specific in relation to the music in hand. Pienaar presents the works chronologically over five CDs, illustrating Mozart's compositional trajectory which represents all of the major stylistic and emotional shifts in his mature career, with the earliest dating from his twentieth year, through his Viennese period, and the final works which were written towards the end of his all too brief life.

Critical acclaim:
"... no doubt that this South African-born pianist is a thinking virtuoso ... In the company of such contrasting practitioners as Edwin Fischer, Samuel Feinberg, Sviatoslav Richter and Glenn Gould, he seems determined to leave his own mark" - BBC Music Magazine

"Daniel-Ben Pienaar's performances are quite simply stunning. The instrument he plays matters much less than his musicianship, which is evident at every turn." - Gramophone

"A kaleidoscope of colours and textures in performances that combined the dramatic with the ethereal, the monumental with the intimate" - International Piano summary South African-born, London resident Daniel-Ben Pienaar makes his Avie debut with this beautifully recorded and ambitious project: the complete Piano Sonatas of Mozart.

Includes sym(s) by Leopold Mozart.

L. MOZART Divertimento in F, “Musical Sleigh Ride.” Cassation in G, “Toy Symphony.” Symphonies: in D; in G, “ Sinfonia da caccia” • Hans Stadlmair, cond; Munich CO • TUDOR 737 (59:03)


Hans Stadlmair has been artistic director of the Munich Chamber Orchestra since 1956. This CD reveals an excellence of conducting and playing of Classical music off the beaten path. Leopold Mozart is more famous as the father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart than as a composer in his own right. The music on this disc supports history’s judgment as to the source of his fame. Yet some of this music can play an important role in propagating the greater Classical pieces.


The “Musical Sleigh Ride” and the “Toy Symphony” are among those vital pieces that serve young children as introductions to classical music. The “Toy Symphony” has been variously attributed to several composers, among them one of the Haydns (the famous Joseph and his lesser-known brother, Michael) and Leopold Mozart, who is the current winner of the attributions.


The most interesting piece in this collection is the “Sinfonia da caccia,” with its opening movement depicting a hunt ( a caccia ), complete with yelping hounds, galloping hoofs, and, most effectively, firing shotguns. This is another great piece for kids. Unless your child is another Mendelssohn/Mozart/Schubert genius, this music is a good way to lead him or her to discover The Art of Fugue 20 or 30 years hence, with a way station at the Beethoven symphonies.


Get this disc for your kids or grandkids! But not if you consider hunting and guns inappropriate for young children. Get it for yourself, to experience the caccia —vicariously perhaps, but without mammalian casualties!


FANFARE: Burton Rothleder

The last ten years of Mozart' life, spent in Vienna, coincided with the growing development and popularity of the clarinet. In particular, Mozart found inspiration in the playing of the Stadler brothers, resulting in his Clarinet Concerto.

KLEINE NACHTMUSIK KV 525, CONC

Classical Music

This program, three Mozart Divertimentos and the searching C minor wind Serenade K. 388, balances light-hearted entertainment-genre works against the darkly passionate utterances of the latter. The Oslo players favor rapid, agile tempos in the lively Allegro of K. 227 and in the zestful finale (Presto) of K. 252. Their direct and forceful style, highlighted by pointed articulation and tonguing, seems ideal. The recording picks up some key-noise, especially in running passages--an annoyance for some, heightened realism and immediacy for others. This brisk, punchy approach gives unexpected rigor to the minuets, but also contributes to a highly imaginative account of the stylish variations that (unusually) open the F major Divertimento K. 253. The two bassoons, who have important roles here, are excellent.


In the C minor Serenade, the closely focused sonics significantly bolster the urgent, impulsive manner of the performance. After the incisive unison start, the first movement is thrusting and dramatic, with dynamics carefully observed and maximal contrast attained in the radiant second subject, highlighted by superb phrasing from the first oboe. The Andante is capably done, but more coolly than in the performance by Consortium Classicum on EMI, where there's more individuality and distinctiveness from denser-toned clarinets and softer-edged horns.


The Oslo recording, with its clearer perspectives, makes canonic writing in the vehement Minuet terse and austere-sounding, but you may prefer Consortium Classicum's more genial and imaginative characterizations of the finale's variations. Finally, the Oslo winds' lively, bustling account of the last variation, in bright tonic major, is quicker and also more brilliant, completing a fine budget release. [6/11/2002]
--Michael Jameson, ClassicsToday.com

This new volume in the 'Next Generation Mozart Soloists' series features Mozart's very first piano concerto (K. 37), composed when he was just 11 years old, and his very last, the Concerto K. 595, finished on 5 January 1791, exactly 11 months before his death. "The combination of the naive and youthful first concerto with the mature last concerto and it's reflection of how much Bach's music had affected him shows just how extraordinarily his brilliant mind had developed", says pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen, who performs them under the baton of Howard Griffiths. She studied with Joan Havill, Imogen Cooper, Richard Goode and Andras Schiff at the Kronberg Academy. Bla� sparovec, principal clarinettist of the Gurzenich Orchestra in Cologne, takes on one of Mozart's very last works, the famous Clarinet Concerto K. 622, "a concerto that can only be compared to an opera in which the basset clarinet plays all the roles", says sparovec.

MAGIC FLUTE

Zofia Neugebauer, born in Poland in 1994, played at the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic. She was principal flutist in renowned orchestras such as the Lucerne and Basel Symphony Orchestras and performed with renowned conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle and Zubin Mehta. In 2018, the Mozart Society Dortmund accepted Neugebauer into it's scholarship program, where she discovered her love for Mozart. Together with the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen, directed by Johannes Klumpp, she now presents Mozart's Flute Concertos and two newly written cadenzas on her album Il Vento non Scritto.

Violinist Ning Feng performs the Complete Mozart Violin Concertos with the Kammerakademie Potsdam on Channel Classics Records. These 5 concertos were written because Mozart's father, Leopold, was frustrated at the thought of Wolfgang, on his travels, neglecting the violin as a possible source of income, as Mozart could himself play the violin beautifully, and he wrote brilliantly for the instrument. Composed mainly in 1775, these concertos display the theatrical twists and turns that were by now second nature to the 19-year-old composer, with his thoughts and dreams perpetually fixed on opera and the drama.

This is the last release of a six-release album series presenting all violin concertos by Mozart. Together with the the Spanish violinist and conductor Robert Gonzales-Monjas, who is the chief conductor of the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, the orchestra proves once again it's unrivaled position as interpreters of the Mozart stylistic. The album will be released during the Salzburg Mozartwoche in January 2026