‘Mozart, You Drive Me Crazy!’ This is the title that the South African soprano Golda Schultz has decided to give to her new album, devoted to the female heroines of Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and Le nozze di Figaro, roles that have marked her career from Berlin to The Metropolitan Opera: ‘Why does Mozart drive me crazy? First of all, because his music, which sounds so easy when you listen to it, is extremely difficult to perform… And when I immerse myself in the world of Da Ponte and Mozart, I realise that there’s a deep complexity to their female characters: they endure the toughest trials, but they also display great strength. In fact, these operas explore humanity from the feminine perspective: every single one of these women is constantly evolving. They show how human beings transcend trauma and how grief and pain can be overcome.’ The programme is conducted by another eminent Mozartian, Antonello Manacorda, with the Kammerakademie Potsdam.

The mass that Mozart composed in 1779 for the Easter service in Salzburg Cathedral is shrouded in legend. From the very first bar onwards, it exudes the stately tone that would, much later on, earn it the sobriquet "Coronation Mass". Soon after Mozart's death, it became the Viennese court orchestra’s favorite mass for coronation ceremonies.

This new release from BR-KLASSIK is a live recording of a concert, performed on May 21, 2022 in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. That concert of sacred music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart included three other, lesser-known compositions that were also written during his time in Salzburg. Here they are woven in between the short movements of the Coronation Mass, and thus connected to the Mass in a way that might have been required by the practical performance conditions of a Salzburg church service.

In his "Vesperae solennes de Dominica", composed during the same year as the Mass, Mozart fulfilled the Salzburg prince-archbishop's demands for the greatest possible brevity in a tongue-in-cheek manner, by means of various compositional tricks as well as a particularly sonorous score. The album is rounded off by the "Epistle Sonata" for orchestra with obbligato organ in C major, K 329, written to accompany the "Coronation Mass", as well as by the solemn offertory "Alma Dei creatoris" for soloists, choir and orchestra in F major, K 277.

The first-rate cast of soloists consists of Katharina Konradi (soprano), Sophie Harmsen (mezzo-soprano), Steve Davislim (tenor) and Krešimir Stražanac (bass). The soloists and the excellent Bavarian Radio Chorus are accompanied by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, one of the most renowned orchestras in the field of historical and historically informed performance practice. The conductor is Howard Arman.

Bridge's new Complete Mozart Flute & Orchestra album features the Odense Symphony Orchestra and their principal flautist, Rune Most, performing on a wooden flute. The recording, made in the acoustically superb Carl Nielsen Hall, includes the two flute concertos, the rondo, and perennial Mozart favorite, the Concerto for Flute and Harp. Rune Most began his studies at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense with Karl Lewkovitch. Later came studies with Professor Lóránt Kovács in Budapest, and in 1990 he made his debut from the soloist class of the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where he had studied with Toke Lund Christiansen. Today Rune Most is solo flautist with the Odense Symphony Orchestra and teaches at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense. Over the years music has taken him to South America, China, Russia and many countries in Europe as a chamber musician and soloist. As a soloist and chamber musician he has recorded several albums of, among other things, Danish and South American music.

Fortepianist Keiko Shichijo presents a radically fresh view of Mozart's keyboard music. Neal Peres Da Costa, Professor of Historical Performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music writes: "Keiko Shichijo has been inspired to reimagine a Mozart that is highly expressive, rhetorical, and even occasionally volatile." Shichijo's brilliant Mozart was recorded on an original Frère et Soeur Stein d’Augsbourg à Vienne dated 1802. Mr. Da Costa calls the instrument "absolutely ravishing in sound, with a clarity, crispness, and resonance that is ideally suited to Mozart’s piano writing." Keiko Shichijo is a special voice in both the Classical and new music worlds. Her traditional Japanese sensibilities combined with her knowledge of European historical performance practices shape her unique vision, and this is reflected in her feeling for the music, the instruments and the story behind them.

Rarity – German version of Mozart's "Finta gardiniera. 5 years ago, the Munich Radio Orchestra under Andrew Parrott performed Mozart's singspiel "Die verstellte Gärtnerin" - the rarely performed German version of "Finta gardiniera," which can now finally appear on cpo. When this opera was first performed, Mozart was 19 years old - an age at which most composers had not even begun. Wolfgang Amadeus' career as a musician - and as a composer - had been in full swing for several years, however. The work belongs to the genre of opera buffa, within which it follows the type of opera semiseria (half opera) popular at the time. Accordingly, in addition to buffa parts, there are also semi-seria parts and even a pure seria part. The music is of great richness. Mozart shows himself here as a true master of opera buffa. At the same time, the music already points beyond these to masterpieces such as Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. The first two acts of the opera contain large-scale, effective finales. In the second act, Mozart combines the finale with several preceding arias and recitatives to create a grand scene that transcends the boundaries of contemporary number operas.

Did Mozart have any friends? The word Freund (friend) occurs most frequently in his letters to his fellow Freemason Michael Puchberg. ''Dearest, best of friends'' he often writes in the salutation, or ''I rely entirely on your genuine friendship''. Today we know of 21 letters written between 1788 and 1791 in which Mozart asked Puchberg for financial assistance, amounting altogether to some 400 gulden - roughly, €120,000 in today's currency. Indeed, in the final seven years of his life Mozart seems to have found a sort of ''friendship'' in Vienna's Masonic circles that offered him emotional ties and intellectual stimuli. As far as we can tell from the surviving minutes and attendance lists of the Viennese lodges, his Masonic life was extremely active: a mere ten days after his own induction, and two weeks later he was promoted to journeyman. This album contains all of Mozart's Masonic compositions with the sole exception of The Magic Flute. One of his final works altogether was the cantata Laut verkunde unsre Freude. Written down 19 days before his death, it is the final entry in his autograph thematic catalogue and the last work he ever completed.

Includes sym(s) by Leopold Mozart.

Third volume of Mozart Concertos with Ben Kim and Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra. Concertos No. 11, 12, and 13 were Mozart’s first Concertos written upon moving to Vienna from Salzburg. In a letter addressed to his father Leopold, he described them as “a happy medium between too easy and too difficult; very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid.” Once more Kim gives us a thoroughly personal and deep insight into the famous triptych. Kim stylishly extols the intimate as well as the majestic moments.

The three concertos featured on this album were composed together in 1782 / 83 – shortly after Mozart had left his patron and position in Salzburg to establish himself as a freelance composer and performer in Vienna. The concertos were all performed by the composer in a series of subscription concerts that he gave in the city. All share the same form – opening movement in sonata form, slow movement in ternary form, and a bright rondo finale. Despite these similarities, though, each piece has its own distinct character and identity; such was the extent of Mozart’s genius for invention. Although formally scored for strings with wind, horns, trumpets, and timpani, Mozart also offered them to his publisher to be performed ‘a quatro’ – for strings only. These would be the last concertos he wrote in which this would be possible, and it is certainly likely that it reflected a need to earn greater income as opposed to being a purely artistic decision. As in the rest of this series, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is joined by the Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, who open the album with a dazzling performance of the Overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which dates from the same period.

Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) releases the penultimate volume of an acclaimed project to record Mozart’s complete works for keyboard and orchestra.

This volume includes Mozart’s Concerto No. 7 for Three Pianos and Orchestra, performed here uniquely on three different types of keyboard instruments: by Robert Levin (tangent piano), Ya-Fei Chuang (fortepiano) and Laurence Cummings (harpsichord).

It follows the release of the same concerto in Mozart’s own arrangement for two keyboards (Vol. 11) and is joined on this album by two other Piano Concertos composed in Salzburg in the early months of 1776.

The hardback CD package is accompanied by comprehensive notes commissioned specially for the album.

The horn concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have always been part of the standard repertoire of every horn player. Tyrolean hornist Hansjörg Angerer presents the four horn concertos with the Ensemble Salzburger Hofmusik under the direction of Wolfgang Brunner on an original instrument by an unknown Bohemian master from around 1800. The natural horn originated from the hunting horn by combining the windings, whereby the natural tone series could be played in all common keys by placing different tuning bows on it and, in addition, the intermediate tones of the natural tone series could be obtained, and the sharp or flat tones could be regulated by inserting the right hand into the falls by “plugging” and “damping”. The complex playing techniques as well as the characteristic sound differ fundamentally from a modern valve instrument and allow a deep dive into the great variety of colors in the music of this era.

Channel Classics reissues the 8-CD box-set of Mozart’s complete Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin. Rachel Podger and Gary Cooper make this difficult music sound effortless, witty and elegant on the first-ever recording of the complete sonatas on historical instruments. The inclusion of early, middle and late sonatas in this set conveys a balanced survey of Mozart's music for violin and keyboard. Each sonata stands out in its own right, revealing a snapshot in time of his developing personality. Of the original releases, Gramophone Magazine said that "it's impossible to ignore the individuality, vitality and commitment of their performances", while BBC Music Magazine noted that these are "characteristically intelligent and insightful performances".