32 Bit Mozart

Mozart and his family spent 15 months in London when the composer was eight years old. In London he wrote his first symphonies and first vocal works, serving major notice to the world. Those have been recorded before and are included here, but what's novel is the inclusion of music by other composers whom Mozart would have heard in London. Many of the works here receive their premiere recordings, and The Mozartists and conductor Ian Page ably sketch the influences they likely had on Mozart. Some of the influences from J.C. Bach have been recognized before, but Page goes more deeply into them: you can hear Mozart's way of assigning expressive meaning to transitional passagework, uncanny already at age eight, in the music of the "London Bach.

Mozart and his family spent 15 months in London when the composer was eight years old. In London he wrote his first symphonies and first vocal works, serving major notice to the world. Those have been recorded before and are included here, but what's novel is the inclusion of music by other composers whom Mozart would have heard in London. Many of the works here receive their premiere recordings, and The Mozartists and conductor Ian Page ably sketch the influences they likely had on Mozart. Some of the influences from J.C. Bach have been recognized before, but Page goes more deeply into them: you can hear Mozart's way of assigning expressive meaning to transitional passagework, uncanny already at age eight, in the music of the "London Bach.

As the mysterious opening bars of the Kyrie gradually emerge into the light, we know that this recording of Mozart’s glorious Great Mass in C minor is a special one: the tempi perfect, the unfolding drama of the choral writing so carefully judged, and, above it all, the crystalline beauty of soloist Carolyn Sampson’s soprano, floating like a ministering angel. Masaaki Suzuki’s meticulous attention to detail, so rewarding in his remarkable Bach recordings, shines throughout this disc, the playing alert, the choir responsive, the soloists thrilling. And there is the bonus of an exhilarating Exsultate, Jubilate with Sampson on top form.