Mozart Complete Piano Concertos

EMI invited Daniel Barenboim to record the complete series, with the English Chamber Orchestra, as conductor and soloist. The recordings were made at London's Abbey Road Studios between 1967 and 1974.

This disc, like the others in this series featuring pianist Jeno Jando, is a world-class recording. Mozart would complete twenty-seven concertos for piano and orchestra during his lifetime, many of them the greatest works for that idiom ever created. No. 25 was Mozart's most symphonic effort in the genre he revolutionized during the 1780s. In many of these brilliant concertos, he pitched the piano and orchestra against each other, but in this masterwork they work together as one instrument to produce something extraordinary, even for Mozart. Concerto No. 16 is also a pleasure to hear, the first movement especially. The thoughtful rondo for piano in A major at the end of this disc is a nice extra that Jando plays wonderfully.

Volume 4 of the complete survey of Mozart's Piano Concertos undertaken by Naxos in the late 1980s and early 1990s contains two of his most-loved works, masterpieces both. This particular CD was recorded in the Italian Institute in Budapest and produced by Ibolya Tóth (her recordings are almost always entirely splendid) in October 1989. Piano Concerto No.23 in A major, K488 is often regarded as one of Mozart's sunniest compositions, but the central Adagio is deep and complex, and the piano part is equally balanced with the orchestra, making the Concerto work on several levels.

The Naxos team consisting of pianist Jenö Jandó, the chamber orchestra Concentus Hungaricus and conductor Mátyás Antal came together again in May, June and July 1990 in order to record this, 11 volumes of the Naxos Complete Mozart Piano Concertos, and it seems to me that they had lost nothing of the impetus created by the previous issues, most of which were definite five-star material.

This box set packages the prizewinning complete edition of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart s piano concertos which were recorded with Christian Zacharias and the Chamber Orchestra of Lausanne over the past 12 years.
With his distinctive combination of integrity, unique style, surpassing linguistic expressiveness, deep musical insight and assured artistic instinct paired with his charismatic and captivating personality, Christian Zacharias has made a name for himself not only as one of the world s leading pianists and conductors, but also as a musical thinker. Beginning as a pianist and later moving on to work as a conductor as well, his international career burgeoned through numerous widely acclaimed concerts with the world s leading orchestras, renowned conductors not to mention several awards and recordings.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Complete Piano Concertos Vol. 1
English Chamber Orchestra / Daniel Barenboim, Piano & Direction
4xCD | EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 1,08 GB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: EMI "DRM" # CZS 7 62825 2 | Country/Year: Germany 1989
Genre: Classical | Style: Viennese School, Piano

In the 1960s, while still in his twenties, Daniel Barenboim joined forces with the English Chamber Orchestra to record a groundbreaking set of the complete Mozart Piano Concertos, conducting from the keyboard. Later, he recorded them again with the Berlin Philharmonic, but the English Chamber Orchestra version still has the edge for its bite and beauty, operatic mellifluousness offset by apparently boundless energy and an atmosphere of inspired and intimate music-making from start to finish. Barenboim brings us Mozart in all his many guises, from enfant terrible to founding father and, ultimately, avatar in the term’s original sense.