Enjoy the dramaturgical charm of "Ewig Dein Mozart" and simply surrender to the artist's "approach" to the genius Mozart. Because our generation would also be poorer by an infinite without Mozart. Max Mueller studied acting and singing at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna as well as with Edith Nordegg, Charlotte Grubenmann and Kammersänger Walter Berry. Performance engagements have taken him to such prestigious venues as the Stadttheater Klagenfurt, Wiener Metropol, Theatre de la Bastille, Paris, and many more. With the album "Ewig Dein Mozart" Max Müller also impressively presents himself as a singer in Germany. He combines letters from the composer with selected songs, which he "reads with delicious wit and interprets with emotional depth" (Prof. Gerda Fröhlich, Artistic Director Carinthischer Sommer) The press wrote about his concert of the same name: “You wouldn't want to believe that you can turn every Mozart song into a little scenic experience. Max Müller taught his audience better than that!”

All things Mozart have been said and done, you’d think. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. The exegesis of the Mozart-verse is a full-time job to many. The works on this recording alone raise a bunch of questions of which several remain unanswered. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s story for clarinet and string ensemble hasn’t been fully written yet. Part of it is voiced through some of the most often performed works in the repertoire. Still, every clarinetist is left with the challenge to get hands-on with the music and put a personal, original spin on it. To accomplish this, one has to be willing to do the necessary homework, returning to the source - and to go about it diligently.

Julien Chauvin meets up with one of the great harpsichordists and fortepianists of our time, Andreas Staier, who is a leading interpreter of the Mozart concertos. He presents us with his vision of the Piano Concerto no.23 and its famous Adagio, ‘one of the most heart-rending slow movements ever written by Mozart. Performers often tend to take it too slowly, certainly thinking that this will accentuate the tragic side, but Julien Chauvin and I spontaneously agreed on a slightly faster tempo, which respects the basic pulse of this movement in Siciliana rhythm. When you start with the right tempo, it’s amazing how the whole discourse comes together perfectly, in a very logical and simple manner’, says Staier, who plays a magnificent instrument by Christoph Kern after a 1790 fortepiano by Anton Walter, the great maker of Mozart’s time. Also on the program is the Symphony no.40, in which, says Julien Chauvin, ‘Mozart explores types of writing that he pushes to their most extreme limits. This is the case in the finale, where we find a succession of dissonant disjunct intervals at the opening of the development which, on closer inspection, present us with the full chromatic scale (except for G natural, the symphony’s tonic). And so the twelve-note series was born!’

Following their critically acclaimed first volume of Mozart’s violin concertos (CHAN 20234), Francesca Dego and Sir Roger Norrington complete the set, once again with outstanding support from a reduced Royal Scottish National Orchestra. This cycle not only represents the first time Sir Roger has recorded these concertos, but the present album is also his final recording project. All five concertos were written before Mozart was twenty; nevertheless, his rapid development as a composer is evident in the progression from the first to the fifth, which has an unusual Adagio section within the first movement, an extensive slow movement, and of course the extensive ‘Turkish’ episode in the final movement (probably based on Hungarian folk music). Whilst given on modern instruments with metal strings, these are performances immersed in Norrington’s lifetime of experience in period performance practice. As The Sunday Times noted of the first album: ‘Pairing the veteran Mozartian Norrington – a pioneer of historical performance practice – with the young Italian-American soloist Dego proves inspiring in what promises to be one of the freshest of recent cycles of the Mozart concertos.’

REVIEWS:

Dego’s finespun tone, exquisite timing and enchanting musical inquisitiveness, not to mention her delightfully spontaneous decorating of musical lines, combine to create an uplifting sense of the music being composed as it goes along…[Norrington] could hardly have wished for a finer recorded swansong than this Mozart series.

-- BBC Music Magazine (Julian Haylock)

This recording is characterized by excellently balanced interpretations. They are characterized by a light-hearted and fluid gesture… Francesca Dego also finds an exciting approach to Mozart… she scores here with a creative approach, tonal freshness and noblesse. The orchestra from Scotland, conducted by Roger Norrington, soars, with the violins in oppositional seating as in Mozart’s day, to intense music-making that doesn’t overpower, creating a fitting complement to the solo mood.

-- Pizzicato (Uwe Krusch)

Pentatone re-issues Julia Fischer’s epoch-making Mozart Violin Concertos recordings, starting with her readings of the famous 3rd and 4th concertos, as well as the Adagio in E Major and Rondo in B-flat Major, first released in 2005. Fischer performs them together with the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Yakov Kreizberg, with whom she developed a highly congenial partnership. When first released, Gramophone praised these performances as “full of disciplined subtlety and astonishing interpretative maturity.” After many years, this legendary recording now returns to the market in an attractive Stereo version.

REVIEW:

These performances are full of disciplined subtlety and astonishing interpretative maturity. The G major Concerto, K216, is lush and spirited, the traditional-style performance lacking nothing in warmth. The relaxed, cantabile style of her playing in the final movement serves the dancelike nature of Mozart's music.

-- Gramophone (reviewing the 2005 SACD version of this release)

Violinist by profession, the Japanese-born Viennese musician Tomoko Mayeda also learned to play the piano from the age of four. Her teacher and mentor Paul Badura-Skoda often took the time to teach her at the piano in addition to his support as a pianistic accompanist at countless concerts and a joint album recording. Mayeda had for a long time cherished the wish of being able to accompany herself at the piano, which she was finally able to realize during the pandemic through technical refinements: First, Mayeda recorded the piano part, to which the violin was then recorded in a second recording session. Since the otherwise usual and necessary agreements regarding musical features are omitted the result is Tomoko Mayeda “100%”, an uncompromising interpretation of W. A. Mozart’s late Viennese violin sonatas (B-flat major, K. 454; E-flat major, K. 481; A major, K. 526).

Classical Music

Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492

Recorded live during the 1957 Festival D'Aix en Provence, each member of the unique cast involved in this production of Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte- Stich-Randall, Berganza, Panerai, Alva - is a singer of superb ability, reputation and a fine Mozartean singer of the time. Leading a famed, historic Parisian orchestra, Hans Rosbaud (1895-1962), a stalwart conductor of music past and present who is sometimes derided as a "Kapellmeister", was, as this and other recordings of the era prove, in fine form during his last full decade of life. Remastered in 24bit/96kHz sound.

Classical Music

Mozart: Don Giovanni, K. 527 (Sung in German) [Recorded 1955

Its style falls a good distance from the historical niceties of our modern era’s historically informed performance standards, but yet it still lands squarely in the most enjoyable listen category. Sir Colin Davis is near the beginning of his brilliant career to come when this Glyndebourne Festival live 1960 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte was staged. He leads a cast including Richard Lewis, Pilar Lorengar, Heather Harper, Geraint Evans and Hungarian bass Mihaly Szekely as Sarastro, whose formidable presence on opera house stages had been overwhelming audiences since the 1920s.

Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serail, K. 384 (Live)

”His Mozart combines the clarity of Christian Zacharias with the refined nuances of Alfred Brendel and the warm sound of Daniel Barenboim.“ This was the verdict in the 5/2015 issue of Fono Forum, which in the next issue promptly awarded the star for the Album of the Month to William Youn for Volume 2 of his edition with Mozart’s piano sonatas. OehmsClassics is proud to have completed this cycle with an exceptional artist, and to be presenting all five volumes here in one spectacular set. The award-winning pianist William Youn has been described by critics as a “genuine poet” with “sovereign, bravura technique of touch”. After early studies in Korea and in the USA, William again changed continents to study at the Hanover University of Music and at the Piano Academy Lake Como, where he worked regularly with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Dmitri Bashkirov, Andreas Staier, William Grant Naboré and Menahem Pressler. Based now in his adopted hometown of Munich, Germany, William performs internationally from Berlin via Seoul to New York with major orchestras

When a pianist extraordinaire still has a lot to say far beyond retirement age, he goes on extensive tours in order to move people emotionally with his work and music. But when Paul Badura-Skoda undertakes the exertions of undergoing long recording sessions to record on three CDs sonatas and other piano works by W. A. Mozart on one of the fortepianos in his collection, then that is a completely different thing. For that means that the matter is close to his heart, and we can be curious to hear how ‘his’ Mozart has ‘matured’ with him over the years. This CD features the Sonata No. 15 in F, KV533.494, the famous “Alla Turca” from the Sonata No. 11 in A, KV331 and a small assortment of other Mozartean jewels, recorded in 2013, with an encore selection from 1976. Winning first prize in the Austrian Music Competition in 1947 meant the beginning of Paul Badura-Skoda’s career. Since 1949, he has performed with major conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan. Major tours as a soloist followed. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, he could be heard in all the parts of the world. The focus of his extensive repertoire (he has made more than 200 recordings) is on works by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.