For today’s musicologists, performers and concert-going audiences, Mozart’s final symphonies are still a veritable miracle. Why they were written remains a mystery, and no-one knows whether Mozart ever heard them performed during his lifetime. One thing is certain: Mozart created three individual, distinctive and unique works here, which complement each other despite their extreme diversity. The symphonies in E Major, K 543 (no. 39), G minor, K. 550 (no. 40), and C Major, K. 551 (no. 41, also known as “The Jupiter”) are the ones that most represent Mozart’s symphonic legacy to later generations of musicians. With its slow introduction, the Symphony in E flat major also opens the entire cycle, already giving the listener a sense of its highs and lows. As early as 1800, the popular "Great" G minor Symphony was praised as the “painting of a passion-stricken soul”. Like its big sister, the "Jupiter" Symphony in C Major, it numbers among the most-played works in classical music and has been immortalized in countless recordings. Nevertheless, these symphonies - probably the most profound ones before Beethoven - reveal themselves as something quite new in every interpretation.

"Mozart placed all the dark sides of human existence into his G minor Symphony", says Herbert Blomstedt, adding that its “passion” continues to fascinate him. The eminent Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt, a close associate and regular guest conductor of the BRSO, conducted the E Major Symphony on December 18 and 19, 2019 in the Philharmonie at the Munich Gasteig, the G minor Symphony in concerts on January 31 and February 1, 2013 and the "Jupiter" Symphony on December 21 and 22, 2017 in the Herkulessaal of Munich’s Residenz. The new 2-CD set from BR-KLASSIK now presents these great cornerstones of Mozart's symphonic oeuvre –in the very best sound quality.

In September of 1816, Schubert began writing a string trio that he would leave unfinished. All that survives is the first movement, an Allegro, plus the first thirty-nine bars of an Andante sostenuto. The writing reveals a glimmer of the orchestral sound of the great chamber works of the last period, but nevertheless it remains linked to the elegant style of the late 18th century.

Mozart’s Divertimento KV563 requires of both its performers and listeners a commitment equal to that for the great instrumental works. Each of the three musicians must be high-level virtuosos to play their parts, which explore the full register of each instrument in a dialogue intertwined with contributions at the same level from the three participants. The only link with the traditional genre is the high number of movements (six), including two minuets.

Mozart’s Requiem was not performed in Paris until 1804, in a version slightly different from the composer’s original score. The press reported a triumph. That same year also saw the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte – who had brought back a pronounced taste for Italian music from his Mediterranean conquests. He appointed the Neapolitan Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816) as his maître de chapelle and commissioned him to write the music for his coronation: a Solemn Mass in B flat major. The Palazzetto Bru Zane has produced the modern edition of the work that is recorded here.

Aside from the sumptuous events of 1804, the other year that links Napoleon to Mozart is 1841, when the Requiem was heard once more, this time at Les Invalides as Napoleon’s remains entered the building for their final burial. Sandrine Piau, Chantal Santon, Eléonore Pancrazi, Mathias Vidal and Thomas Dolié are the soloists in this programme, with Julien Chauvin conducting his ensemble Le Concert de la Loge and the Namur Chamber Choir.

Countertenor Franco Fagioli makes his Pentatone debut with Anime Immortali, together with the Kammerorchester Basel, exploring the music that Mozart composed for castratos. Ranging from opera to sacred music and culminating in Exsultate, jubilate, the recorded works share a sublime and profound character, demonstrating Mozart’s strong connection to the castrato voice. With this album, Fagioli finally returns to the composer that inflamed his desire to become a musician during his youth. Franco Fagioli is one of today’s most esteemed countertenors, and makes his Pentatone debut. The Kammerorchester Basel returns to the label after a recording of Haydn’s Stabat Mater (2022) with René Jacobs.

¡Escucha una entrevista con Fagioli en el podcast Naxos en español!

Newly signed on with naïve, the Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son immerses herself in the limitless whimsical imagination of Mozart’s sonatas, and with this complete collection takes us on a voyage in a land of contrasts. Yeol Eum Son has always been drawn to Mozart’s style, in her heart and in her fingers, and maintains a special relationship with his music. She likes to translate from this language, which she considers her mother tongue, the incredible ability to express different worlds, atmospheres and feeling. “His music,” she says, “speaks of both sunshine and eternal night, extremes of heat and cold, elegance and farce, Lolita and Madonna.”

So you see that I can write as I like, beautifully and wildly, straight and crooked. The other day I had a bad sense of humour, so I wrote beautifully, straight and seriously; today I am well rhymed, so I write wildly, crookedly and merrily; now it all depends on what you prefer, - - you have to choose between the two, because I have no means: beautifully or wildly, straight or crookedly, seriously or merrily, the first three words or the last three. So wrote Mozart in a letter to his cousin, the "Bäsle". The sonatas united in this recording, like the C minor Fantasy, are suitable for showing the two-facedness of Mozart's mind as well as his works.

Jean Muller continues his admirable cycle of the complete Mozart piano sonatas for Hänssler Classic with volume four. He was born in Luxembourg in 1979. At merely six he started piano training at the Luxembourg Conservatoire in the class of Marie-José Hengesch, and made his performing debut at seven. He then completed periods of study in Riga, Brussels, Paris and Munich, and has excelled in the world of international piano competitions, winning over a dozen first prizes. Muller’s performances are very fine. It is easy to sense being in the hands of a performer who is impeccably schooled in these works, and who presents them with precision and utmost sincerity. These endearing, compelling interpretations sound delightful enhanced by the lovely tone of Muller’s Steinway Model D concert grand. Mozart’s music can handle different performance styles. Muller’s stylistic confidence in giving fresh and vital performances, without superfluous decoration, works well here.

All Mozart String Quartets complete. The Armida Quartett is seen today as one of the best quartets coping with the giant W.A. Mozart. Rave reviews from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. The Box has been recorded and released in close cooperation with the famous Henle publisher.

Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) resumes a celebrated project to record Mozart’s complete Piano Concertos, with this ninth volume released after an extraordinary 20-year wait. Together with renowned scholar-pianist Robert Levin, AAM presents Mozart’s Piano Concertos No. 21 in C Major K467, perhaps one of Mozart’s most well-known Piano Concertos and featured in films The Spy Who Loved Me and Elvira Madigan, and No. 24 in C Minor K491, described by Mozart scholar Alexander Hyatt King as ‘not only the most sublime of the whole series but also one of the greatest pianoforte concertos ever composed’. AAM’s founder Christopher Hogwood and Robert Levin came together in 1993 to record Mozart’s complete works for keyboard and orchestra for the first time ever on period instruments. Only eight albums out of a total of 13 were recorded, with the most recent released in 2001. This release marks the renewal of this landmark project and will be followed by the four final albums of the series later in 2023 and 2024.

The piano concerto was the category in which Mozart most consistently excelled, in which he most successfully combined elements of virtuosity and depth, of chamber music and symphonic style, of regard for his public and for personal expression. No. 17 is one of six piano concertos he composed in 1784, two of them, including this one, for one of the most talented of his own pupils, Barbara Ployer. Scored for the same instrumentation as No. 17, No. 27 was his last piano concerto. It stands alone, because its content and character make it unique and it is deeply personal, having a feeling of subdued gravity. Pianist Walter Klien studied with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Paul Hindemith and performed with the world’s top orchestras. The present recording was realized in 1978 by the famous production team of Joanna Nickrenz and Marc Aubort from the appropriately named "Elite Recordings". Many of their projects have achieved collector status, especially those with American orchestras.

REVIEW:

Collectors of a certain age may remember this attractive pairing of Mozart’s 17th and 27th piano concertos through its original LP release on Vox’s subsidiary label Candide. It also turned up on CD as part of Vox’s long gone budget Prima series. Newly remastered for Vox’s new Audiophile Series, this 1978 Elite Recordings production supervised by Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz retains its vivid impact and vibrant detail.

Notice the orchestral ritornellos’ ebb and flow under Stanisław Skrowaczewski’s leadership, and how the forward woodwinds and singing strings conversationally interact. Even in loud tuttis one can take dictation from each orchestral strand. Pianist Walter Klien’s Mozart playing is a model of clarity, projection, poise, and proportion, and he never puts an unbalanced or uneven phrase forward. He’s also one of the few pianists on disc who doesn’t approach Mozart’s final concerto with kid gloves, meaning that his slow movement is full-bodied and fluent rather than ethereal and wispy, and that he doesn’t underplay the finale’s scampering thrust. Sometimes Klien’s phrasing falls into square and tinkly assembly line patterns.

You won’t find the witty inflections and dabs of color that you hear from Peter Serkin or Maria-João Pires in K. 453’s wonderful theme and variations finale. Nor does Klien’s clean yet regimented articulation in K. 595’s first-movement development section match Richard Goode’s harmonic subtlety and feeling for chamber-like repartée. Still, these interpretations won’t steer you wrong. And while I have the floor, we need a truly complete boxed set edition of Skrowaczewski’s Vox recordings!

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Symphony No. 40 in G minor KV 550 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Symphony No. 5 in B flat major D 485 by Franz Schubert – two symphonies with a comparable four-part form, identical prescribed instrumentation and minuets that seem to be each other’s relatives in key signature and characteristics. The Apollo Ensemble did a close examination of these works to see if there is a deeper relationship than just the symphonic form and character of the minuets. Looking back on this process, violinist and artistic leader of Apollo Ensemble, David Rabinovich, was “glad we did that research, because we found out that these symphonies are practically each other’s brothers. It was intriguing to discover how Schubert read Mozart’s score with his musical genius and then put it to work in his own Fifth Symphony. In some passages you can see how Schubert sometimes quotes Mozart measure by measure and that a new musical edifice forms around that quote. [...] The beginning of Schubert’s Fifth Symphony. Those chords for the horns. Suddenly I saw that this is exactly what Mozart was trying to do when reintroducing the theme in the first movement of his symphony. And how about Schubert’s string theme, which seems to flow directly from Mozart’s opening.”

After the research, the performance followed which can be heard on the CD at hand. The Apollo Ensemble is a large chamber music ensemble. For Rabinovich, the difference between playing Schubert’s Octet and his Fifth Symphony is very small. The musicians don’t try to play as a large instrument group, or to melt together into a section sound – they really approach these symphonies as chamber music pieces. Therefore, the balance between strings and winds is completely different and new which allows insights into this music which hardly can be recognized when it is played by a large orchestra. So we get a very interesting new sound without any changed note in the score.

Volume 7 of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s Mozart piano concerto features two of the late concertos – nos. 24 and 25 - coupled with a spirited reading of the Marriage of Figaro overture from Gábor Takács-Nagy and the Manchester Camerata. Concerto no. 24 was written whilst he was busily composing the Marriage of Figaro between October 1785 and the premier in Vienna in May 1786. One of only two of his piano concertos in a minor key, there are many unusual features in this extraordinary work, including the deliberately ambivalent tonality of the opening melody, which uses all 12 tones of the scale (a pre-echo of serialism??!). Concerto no. 25 was probably first performed in Vienna in December 1876, and was certainly a success as there were many repeated performances in the following years (including one by Beethoven in 1795). Recorded in Manchester’s Stoller Hall, Bavouzet plays a Yamaha CFX nine-foot Concert Grand Piano.

REVIEWS:

Bavouzet uses a modern concert grand, with the orchestra avoiding excessive vibrato but otherwise playing in today’s mellow-toned instrumental style. The superlative collective result shows that period performance issues need not be an overriding concern, if the feeling for the idiom itself is so engagingly right.

SOMM Recordings’ acclaimed survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas by Peter Donohoe reaches its end with Volume 6 featuring four works illustrating the composer’s endless fascination and creative invention with the piano.

Mozart described the Piano Sonata No.16 (K.545) as “a little piano sonata for beginners”. It is so much more than that. As Christopher Morley says in his authoritative booklet notes: “Sounding deceptively simple... the opening movement even so probes the player’s technique with a searching spotlight with scales demanding clarity and fluidity, sequences shared between both hands requiring equality of balance, and an absolute steadiness of pulse”. The early Piano Sonata No.4 (K.282), says Morley, reveals the likely influence of CPE Bach, a “rococo/galant bridge between Baroque and Classical approaches”. This revealing six-volume survey concludes with the “awesome pairing” of the improvisatory K.475 Fantasia and Piano Sonata No.14 (K.457), “the Fantasia, which encapsulates so much over so short a span... puts the pragmatic resourcefulness of the sonatas themselves into such telling perspective”.

SOMM’s Mozart Piano Sonatas cycle has attracted superlative reviews. Volume 1 (SOMMCD 0191) received the accolades of BBC Music Magazine’s Recording of the Month and MusicWeb International’s Recording of the Year. Volume 2 (SOMMCD 0198) was also a MusicWeb International Recording of the Year, with Musical Opinion describing Peter Donohoe as “an ideal interpreter”, adding “no finer accounts of these still neglected masterpieces will have been offered to the public”. Volume 3 (SOMMCD 0613) was hailed by ClassicalMusicDaily as “a recording full of joy... the collection as a whole deserves to be celebrated”; Volume 4 (SOMMCD 0629) praised by BBC Music Magazine as “an insightful survey”, adding “Mozart would have approved”.

The splendour of Mozart’s motet Exsultate, jubilate stands out in a repertoire that has for too long remained in the shadows: the magnificent output of church music composed in 18th-century Milan, the city in which Mozart, then not even 17 years old, wrote his first masterpiece of sacred music precisely 250 years ago. The virtuosity and melodic beauty of that score, conceived for the celebrated castrato Venanzio Rauzzini, can finally be heard alongside the brilliant works – for soloists and choir, in both the stile antico and the new modern manner – composed for the exacting noble patrons of the capital of Austrian Lombardy by musicians of great refinement and talent: names that include the universally renowned Johann Christian Bach, Giovanni Andrea Fioroni, the then maestro di cappella of the cathedral, and the hitherto obscure Melchiorre Chiesa.

He loved to improvise on the organ, which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart considered "the king of instruments". It is all the more astonishing that only a few " genuine" organ compositions found their way into his catalogue of works. For his latest production, Christoph Schoener combines obvious and surprising arrangements with Mozart's original works. The new Wegscheider organ in St. Jakobi in Stralsund proves to be the ideal instrument in his respectful reference to the masters of the 18th century. The Stralsund organ has had a checkered history: the magnificent case has always fascinated art-loving visitors from all over the world, but for a long time the organ work behind it did not live up to its visual pretensions. The first instrument soon fell into disrepair due to inferior workmanship, and later alterations and extensions tended to worsen the condition and threatened to destroy the ornate carving through overloading. It was not until Kristian Wegscheider completed a new building in 2020 that the ornate exterior was matched by an adequate interior. Schoener knows how to make the most of this: Be it for Mozart's original works, which were mostly composed for a self-playing instrument, or be it for the transcriptions, from the "Magic Flute" and the "Figaro" to piano works such as the popular Variations on "Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman". Even Franz Liszt, who is extremely knowledgeable about the organ, is among the arrangers ("Ave verum corpus") - if that's not incentive enough!