Mozart: Symphonies, Vol. 1

MOZART: PIANO CONCERTOS 19 & 2

Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) releases the final volume of an acclaimed project to record Mozart's complete works for keyboard and orchestra. Fittingly, this final instalment includes three works that in various ways are valedictory: K595 is Mozart's last completed keyboard concert, while K503 is the last concerto of his Viennese years. Louise Alder joins AAM and Robert Levin in an aria for solo soprano, solo keyboard and orchestra; Ch'io mi scordi di te? is a farewell to one of Mozart's favourite singers, Nancy Storace. The hardback CD package is accompanied by comprehensive notes commissioned specially for the album.

Classical Music

Christoph Poppen and his Cologne forces continue their critically acclaimed exploration of Mozart's Masses. Featuring Mass No. 7 'Missa in honorem Sanctissimae Trinitatis' and two Missae brevis in D major and B flat major respectively. Volume 1 is on 8.574270, Volume 2 is on 8.574417.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This ninth volume in the Next Generation Mozart Soloists series brings together four young soloists under conductor Howard Griffiths and reveals the sheer breadth of Mozart's creativity. Mozart most probably heard a sinfonia concertante - a work in which a group of solo instruments embarks on a dialogue with orchestra - for the first time in Paris in 1778. He composed such a work for violin, viola, and orchestra the following year: the Sinfonia concertante KV 364. It is recorded here by Johan Dalene and Eivind Ringstad, who are full of praise for how Mozart gave the viola equal footing with the violin. Mozart composed no fewer than four horn concertos in Vienna; the first that he composed is performed here by Alexandre Zanetta, who admits to being fascinated by it's finesse, it's complexity and it's humour. The pianist Ariel Lanyi describes the two rondos for piano and orchestra KV 382 and KV 386 recorded here as perfect examples of simplicity and variety, as well as of passages that are truly operatic in style.

Hailed for his “Apollonian virtuosity and sensitive tone” (Online Merker, Germany), multi-award-winning pianist-composer Zhen Chen has performed as a soloist and chamber music artist at prominent music venues in the USA, Europe, and China. These venues include Stern Auditorium and Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall of Lincoln Center, Preston Bradley Hall of the Chicago Cultural Center, and China National Centre for Performing Arts.

Since its founding in 1952, the Chamber Orchestra Mannheim has been particularly committed to the rediscovery of and care for the Mannheim School, thus acting as a direct descendant of the famous Mannheim Hofkapelle during the times of Prince Elector Carl Theodor (1724–1799). Thanks to Carl Theodor's modern and enlightened thinking, Mannheim and the Palatine Electorate developed into one of the most innovative and forward-thinking regions in Germany and Europe in the realms of science and art during his reign. It was particularly in the area of music that he succeeded in setting new standards by attracting the best composers and instrumentalists of their time – among them Johann Stamitz and his sons, Anton and Carl, Franz Xaver Richter, Ignaz Holzbauer, or Christian Cannabich – to the Mannheim court, who were to pave the way for a new orchestra culture with their work.

Viennese-born Thomas Rösner is in high demand as a conductor for symphonic repertoire as well as opera since he made his debut with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva.

Mari Kodama, Momo Kodama, Karin Kei Nagano, and Kent Nagano present Double and Triple Concertos by Mozart and Poulenc, together with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. This unique project highlights the musicality and congeniality of this extraordinary family of performers. On this album, the husband (Kent Nagano) conducts his wife (Mari Kodama), daughter (Karin Kei Nagano), and sister-in-law (Momo Kodama). The collective performance on this album resonates with Mozart’s own practice of playing his music together with his father and sister. Despite belonging to different ages in music history, Mozart and Poulenc share a combination of playfulness and seriousness, and the latter composer manages to integrate touches of Mozartian neoclassicism into his genuinely French and twentieth-century double concerto. Sharing the stage on this recording is a dream come true for the Kodama-Nagano family.

Mari Kodama, Momo Kodama, and Kent Nagano have appeared on Pentatone frequently, including recordings of Tchaikovsky Ballet Duos (2016) and Martinu Double Concertos (2018) featuring the two sisters. Karin Kei Nagano makes her Pentatone debut.

It is difficult to say anything about Mozart's famous Requiem – the masterpiece having been described and analysed all too often. It is known to almost everyone in the world, either in its entirety or in large parts, or is familiar to them at the very least from its title. Almost everybody has come into contact with the Requiem’s music, whether from the concert hall or merely from watching Miloš Forman's 1984 film drama "Amadeus". What breathes new life into this work and this music time and again are congenial performances with outstanding casts. A true highlight in the performance history of the Requiem was Mariss Jansons' interpretation of it in May 2017, which absolutely delighted the Munich concert audience and was also highly acclaimed by the trade press. Under Jansons' direction, the Bavarian Radio Chorus and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks gave of their best, with an excellent quartet of vocal soloists rounding off the outstanding ensemble. This made the performances of Mozart's Requiem in the popular completed version by his student Süßmayr a truly memorable experience.

The live recording from the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz was made on May 11 and 12, 2017 and has now been released on a single CD by BR-KLASSIK.

Although Mozart composed them in his early twenties, the three symphonies presented here can in no way be regarded as early works. Written around the time of his departure from Salzburg for Vienna, these symphonies show that Mozart could deliver attractive, varied, orchestrally colourful and characterful music to suit a variety of public tastes. They also show a young and ambitious composer seeking to forge an impregnable reputation in Europe’s musical capital city. These symphonies truly opened a new chapter in Mozart’s symphonic output, as he demonstrated his absolute mastery of orchestral writing. In addition to the three symphonies as we know them, this recording also includes a minuet that may have been intended to form part of Symphony No. 34.

These three symphonies are performed here by the Philharmonia Orchestra, an ensemble that has performed them with the greatest conductors throughout its almost 80-year history. Here the conductor is the eminent Mozartian Michael Collins, whose recordings, notably that devoted to the Austrian composer’s clarinet concerto and quintet, have earned him the highest praise.

REVIEWS:

As a poetic exponent of Mozart’s music for clarinet, Michael Collins, unsurprisingly, shapes all three slow movements with a natural feeling for Mozartian line. His flowing tempos sound spot on.

— Gramophone

There is always room in the Mozart discography for new recordings of this stature.

— BBC Music Magazine

A divertimento is defined as music intended for light entertainment, 'to please the ear' rather than arouse the emotions, in the phrase of one early-19th-century theorist. The word was used interchangeably at the time with serenade and cassation, and Mozart wrote pieces with all three titles, gathered in this collection, for chamber and orchestral groups, intended for use in the theatre, outdoor, domestic, and courtly settings alike. That Mozart spent a good part of a decade (1769-1779) succeeding in writing divertimenti and serenades which elicit both delight and deep emotion is just one salient indication of his standing above almost all his contemporaries.

This quality is most obviously the case in the Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments, K361, known as the 'Gran Partita', which Salieri in Amadeus cites as an exemplar of Mozart’s genius for smiling through tears. Aside from this and Eine kleine Nachtmusik, very many of his lighter works remain neglected in performance, yet a work such as the D major Serenade K251 is no less characteristic of Mozart in its pliable dialogue between winds and strings, instantly identifiable harmonies, and feeling for form, which knits together apparently disparate genre-types of dances and sonata movements into a coherent whole.

This new collection brings together historically informed recordings made by Brilliant Classics together with digital-era versions of rarer repertoire, initially issued by Berlin Classics and Capriccio, featuring stylish German ensembles with a natural feeling for the Mozart idiom. A new essay by Jos van der Zanden ranges over Mozart’s approach to the divertimento genre, observing how the composer systematically satisfies the demands of the contrasting kinds of listener known in the 18th century as Liebhaber (music-lovers) and Kenner (connoisseurs). There are private jokes, not only in the infamous Musikalischer Spass but the contrast between solemnity and levity in the Haffner Serenade. No less than in the more intellectually prized genres of quartet, sonata, and opera seria, Mozart is always experimenting with form, instrumental color, and harmony, and such a complete set allows listeners at every stage of their musical development to explore this for themselves.

SYMPHONIES NOS. 40 & 41