MOZART: REQUIEM LIPP, R?SSL-M

The works on this recording form the basis for a recital featuring readings of Constanze Mozart's letters. The album does not include the readings. ''Helas, j'ai perdu mon amant'' is the title of the project that gave rise to the recordings on this album. What lies behind the title you have chosen? Stephan Imorde: For quite some time we had already wanted to associate text and music on the concert podium in order to place music in a new context. Our idea was to view Mozart from the perspective of his wife Constanze: in our attempt to picture how she must have perceived Wolfgang's life, we embarked on an imaginary journey. Ulf Schneider: Very few letters written by Constanze have been preserved. Nevertheless, from the great number of letters her husband sent her, we can surmise that the two were emotionally very close. On the basis of those letters, music journalist Jurgen Otten has drawn up a fictitious diary. In our project we hold a musical dialogue with acress Fritzi Haberlandt: between the pieces, she reads from the diary.

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*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. ***

Wanda Landowska's reputation as a harpsichordist obscures her considerable achievements as a pianist, especially in regard to these extraordinary Mozart recordings, made at her Lakeville, Connecticut home in 1956. The sound is on the dry side, and Landowska's reposeful, intimately scaled readings rarely exceed mezzo-forte. Yet her seemingly infinite gradations of shading and touch, her immaculate control and timing, plus her well-considered and expressive embellishments (try the K. 333 sonata first movement's exposition for a few elaborate surprises) add up to a master class in style from which many of today's historic-minded interpreters can learn and benefit.

A singing impulse consistently governs Landowska's liquid trills, proportioned rubatos, and finely tuned balances between the hands that ensure no dead spots. She arpeggiates chords with the utmost specificity, abetted by a masterful and sophisticated finger legato technique. As a result, she employs the sustain pedal sparingly and tellingly. Although these performances were reissued on CD only by RCA Japan, they now gain a welcome lease on life courtesy of Arkivmusic.com's "on demand" reprint program. Notes are in Japanese only.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

The first work here is Mozart's 'Second' Flute Concerto, a 1778 reworking in D major of an Oboe Concerto in C major, K271k, composed a year earlier. Commissioned to compose three concertos for an amateur flautist called Dr Ferdinand Dejean, a scientist in the service of the Dutch East India Company, he was unhappy about his task; ''I become quite powerless when I am obliged to write for an instrument which I cannot bear'', he told his father in a letter at the time. But predictably he did a good compositional job on this work and also on the G major, K313, which was written directly for the flute at much the same time, and it is tempting to believe that the composer would have had a kinder view of James Galway's refined modem instrument.

Galway is of course a master, and he draws faithful playing from the musicians of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe so that Mozart's music comes across positively. The flute is well balanced too with the orchestra of two oboes, two horns and strings. The recording (made in London's Conway Hall in December 1984 and July 1985) is reverberant, with dynamics on the loud side and a boomy bass, as if the double-basses in particular have been artificially boosted—this is especially noticeable in such passages as the start of the Adagio ma non troppo of the G major Concerto.

The Concerto for flute and harp belongs to the same period as those for flute (1778) and was composed in Paris for the Duc de Guines and his harpist daughter. Sensuously beautiful and ingenious too, this substantial work receives a thoughtful perfomance from James Galway and Marisa Robles, and although at the start of the initial Allegro one notes a deliberate tempo the pretty sounds produced by the two solo instruments on their entry make one cease to query the pace and overall this is an attractive account. One can see that restricting this issue to original works including Mozart's own flute version of the C major Oboe Concerto would still have taken it beyond the length of one CD. As it is, filling two CDs taking 109 minutes (not especially long even so) has necessitated incorporating two transcriptions and also the Eine kleine Nachtmusik in which, of course, the flute has no place at all but which needs no recommendation as music. As for the transcriptions, Mozart's Rondo, K373, was originally for violin and orchestra, but flautists have adopted it in a transposition to D major and it goes well in this form; this arrangement is by James Galway himself, as is that of the minuet from the Divertimento for two horns and strings, K334—a famous tune that well suits the flute.

-- Christopher Headington, Gramophone [7/1989]

PIANO SONATAS

Mozart: Don Giovanni, K. 527 - Schubert: Lachen und Weinen,

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• The inaugural broadcast of the Peabody and Emmy®-award winning series The Met Live in HD.
• The Magic Flute has delighted audiences of all ages for centuries. Julie Taymor’s dazzling English-language production brings one of Mozart’s greatest works to life as never before.
• James Levine leads a cast that includes Ying Huang as Pamina in her Met debut, Nathan Gunn, Matthew Polenzani, Erika Miklosa and Rene Papa.
• Taken from the December 30, 2006 live performance.
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1

MOZART: PRUSSIAN QUARTETS

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