32 Bit Mozart

"If this first volume is anything to go by, the journey will be a joy…Hewitt makes them sound effortless.

The third volume of Mozart’s Masses focuses on works written in Salzburg when the composer was in his late teens and early twenties. The Missa in honorem Sanctissimae Trinitatis , a bright celebratory work, is the only Mass setting without soloists that Mozart composed. The Missa Brevis in D major is a compact, economic setting conforming to the Archbishop’s dictates for shorter works. Its companion, the Missa Brevis in B flat major , though keenly responsive and beautiful, upset church musicians because it utilised a Parisian gavotte in the ‘Dona nobis pacem’ and ended Mozart’s employment on a provocative note.

A new program was gradually developed. While 'Magical Garden' (the previous CD) focused on the work of French composers, this time Pianoduo Amacord recorded an album with works written in the Theme & Variation form by great (and one less well-known) Viennese composers: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Herzogenberg. Vienna is not only the city where the Variation Form reached its peak, it is also the city where pianists Ivana Alkovic and Maarten den Hengst met during their studies and Pianoduo Amacord was founded.​

"Having listened for over half a century to tens of thousands of recordings of Mozart’s music, be it piano music, string quartets, symphonies, operas, et al, I have been hugely energised by these recordings, not because they are so great, but because they are so terrible!"

Mozart composed some fifty symphonies, if we include works he adapted from opera overtures or serenades by adding movements or taking them away. The first dates from 1764-5, at the time of his childhood visit to London, and most are early works, quite short. Many are associated with his boyhood travels (his first trip to Italy in 1769-71, for instance) but his most prolific period as a symphonist was between 1771 and 1774 when, in Salzburg, he wrote no fewer than seventeen.

After the monumental integral dedicated to Mendelssohn, Roberto Prosseda concludes the complete cycle of Mozart's solo piano works with non-equal tuning. Another great project that has received critical acclaim since the first album (Sonatas n. 1-6) released in April 2016.

HORN TRIOS from MOZART to PIAZZOLLA and beyond (Volume 1) is the first installment of a 2-volume compendium of horn trios from the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries - an amazing "anthology" of original and arranged repertoire for the trio ensemble of horn, violin and piano.

On this album, the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge performs alongside four soloists and the period instrument ensemble St John’s Sinfonia. The tenor Sam Furness and bass George Humphreys both started their careers as Choral Scholars with this very choir.

HORN TRIOS from MOZART to PIAZZOLLA and beyond (Volume 1) is the first installment of a 2-volume compendium of horn trios from the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries - an amazing "anthology" of original and arranged repertoire for the trio ensemble of horn, violin and piano.