Brahms & Bruch: Violin Concertos

RACHMANINOV: Variations on a Theme of Corelli / Moments Musi

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 11 and 29

ADAGIO 2

ROMANTIC PIANO FAVOURITES, VOL. 4

NIELSEN, C.: String Quartets, Vol. 2

Britten: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 - 3 Divertimenti

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4

ROMANTIC PIANO FAVOURITES, Vol. 10

The fifth of Schubert's nine numbered symphonies was written in 1816 and was performed in October, a month after it's composition, at the house of Otto Hatwig, a violinist in the Burgtheater orchestra. The musicians concerned were otherwise amateurs from the group that had been accustomed to meet at the house of Schubert's father. The music is in the tradition of what Schubert in his diary that year described as the magic sound of Mozart, the immortal. It is scored for flute, pairs of oboes, bassoons and horns, with strings, while the Unfinished Symphony was to make use of a larger orchestra that included clarinets, trombones, trumpets and drums. The first movement leads us through the charm of it's principal melodic material to an excursion into stranger keys, until a recapitulation that opens with the first theme in the key of E fiat, before the original key of the movement is restored. There follows a slow movement that is in that essentially Viennese operatic idiom of which Mozart was the greatest exponent, succeeded by a lively Minuet and Trio in the keys of G minor and G major respectively. The symphony ends with a finale that contains all the dramatic contrasts that the customary form encourages. Rosamunde, Fuerstin von Zypern, was staged at the Theater an der Wien in 1823. The play, by the blue-stocking Helmina von Chezy, was hastily written and was a dramatic disaster, receiving only two performances, it's name remembered only because of the association with Schubert, who, with equal haste, provided music for it. The full score included choral items, which were well enough received by audiences. The Overture was borrowed from an earlier work, Alfonso and Estrella, although the so-called Rosamunde Overture was borrowed from Schubert's opera Die Zauberharfe. It is, however, the entr'acte and ballet music that have won lasting popularity. The Rosamunde theme was used in the following year as a theme for variations in the A minor String Quartet and later re-appeared once more in the B flat Impromptu. The Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra has benefited considerably from the work of it's distinguished conductors. These included Vaclav Talich (1949 -1952), Ludovit Rajter and Ladislav Slovak. The Czech conductor Libor Pesek was appointed resident conductor in 1981, and the present Principal Conductor is the Slovak musician Bystrik Rezucha. Zdenek Kosl.

Constanze Mozart was later to claim that her husband had a premonition that the Requiem was an omen of his own coming death, a suggestion to which one may attach little credence, however attractive the story may appear to the romantic imagination. Mozart seemed, in the summer of 1791, very much more cheerful than he had been, since his fortunes had taken an obvious turn for the better. In November, however, he was taken ill and within a fortnight he was dead, his death ascribed by his doctor to military fever, but the subject of much subsequent speculation. On 4th December he felt well enough to sing with his friends parts of the Requiem, which was still incomplete. Benedikt Schack, Tamino in Die Zauberfl�te, sang the soprano part in falsetto, Mozart sang alto, the violinist Hofer, husband of Constanze's sister Josefa, Queen of the Night, sang tenor and Franz Gerl, whose wife played Papagena, while he took the part of Sarastro, sang bass. It is said that Mozart burst into tears and could go no further when it came to the Lacrimosa, of which, incidentally, he had written on I y the first eight bars. This was in the afternoon. In the evening his condition worsened and he died at five minutes to one on the morning of 5th December, to be buried a day or so later in an unmarked grave. Mozart had completed the composition and scoring of the Introit and Kyrie, used by S�ssmayer for the final Communion, Lux aeterna. The great Sequence, the Dies Irae, was sketched fairly fully up to the verse Lacrimosa, dies illa, a point at which Eybler too gave up his tentative work on the score. S�ssmayer continued the Lacrimosa for a further 22 bars, completing it. Mozart had written the voice parts and bass of the Offertory, as he had for much of the Dies Irae, and this S�ssmayer completed. Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei are the work of S�ssmayer. The Czech conductor Zdenek Kosler studied under Karel Ancerl at the Prague Academy of Arts, and distinguished himself early in his career at the Besan�on Conductors' Competition and in the Dimitri Mitropoulos Competition in New York. The first prize in the second of these enabled him to work as assistant-conductor with Leonard Bernstein for one year.

Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 5

MOZART: Symphonies Nos. 29, 30 and 38

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 11 and 22

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 17 and 18